Fraudulent Perception
by Jet44
Summary: Don is arrested for fraud; Charlie & the others struggle to save him from prison by proving he was framed. Don has to face his future and past, and the case brings Charlie and Don even closer. Don/Robin, Charlie/Amita. Angst/Family/Hurt/Comfort. COMPLETE.
1. Chapter 1

**Dedication:**

Now that this story is finished, I would like to dedicate it to all of you who not only read it, but took the time to share your thoughts and reviews with me and let me know my words were being enjoyed. Many of the things you said about Numb3rs and about this story really resonated, and believe me I have read and re-read your comments many times over. I know it takes time and effort to type out a thoughtful review and I don't take that lightly.

Many thanks to AriesTaurus, Bunny1, Cady, Carol, Cassie, Catalina H, CerealKillerZero, chymom, csinumb3erslover, epalladino, fantasy27, KarinBear, Katie, Kim, Library Bum, LivsLives4Love, Loveisuniversal345, LUVNUMB3ERS, , PattyB, piano13, Rainbow Stevie, Rinne, Smiling!, some crazy girl who likes pie, Wenwalke, and Zaza.

PattyB, CerealKillerZero, Rainbow Stevie, and Rinne, your regular and wonderful reviews are the reason this story continued, and you have made my day more times than I can count. Thank you. There is someone who belongs in the above lists whose name has to to with graham crackers, and for some reason the site keeps deleting it. You know who you are :)

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**Outline/warnings/random disclosures:**

This story grew out of a one-shot little fic I wrote about Don's reaction to Charlie's arrest in Worlds Collide, which made me wonder: how would Charlie react if Don were to be arrested? What about Alan, Amita, Robin, and the FBI team? How many pieces would that rip Don's world into? This story is the result of my continuing along that line of musing.

Don is framed and arrested for fraud, and while his friends and family remain firmly in his corner and fight to discover the truth, Don has to face many thoughts about his future and past - as well as possibly helping break the case that will determine his entire future. Charlie has to struggle through his emotions and work on the case, which happens to bring Charlie and Don even closer and helps Charlie gain an even more profound appreciation of what Don goes through as an FBI agent.

The original little fic, Tradition of Disobedience, is here on this site if anyone wants to read it.

_Language:_ Yes, the characters talk. ;) Sometimes, they even swear.

_Violence:_ No brain bleach will be needed. There are one or two scenes that might be considered disturbing as well as brief reference to murder and rape, and Don gets kicked around pretty soundly at one point, but overall this story is less violent then your average Numb3rs episode.

_Angst and emotional hurt/comfort:_ Everywhere the eye can see. If I didn't make you tear up at least once, or at least get a little mushy inside, I didn't do a very good job.

_Sexual content: _Story assumes healthy Numb3rs canon relationships in the form of Don/Robin and Charlie/Amita. No graphic/adult content or pairings with titles like Billy/zoo monkey/Alan.

_Guest characters:_ Brief visit by Gary Walker.

_Ownership:_ I own a Kia subcompact running on three whole cylinders. I do not, unfortunately, own Numb3rs or anything remotely connected to it. (Wait. I own the DVDs, does that count?)

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**Chapter 1**

**EVENING, EPPES RESIDENCE.**

Don, Alan, and Charlie raised their beers. "To the successful publication of yet another groundbreaking paper by Professor Charles Eppes," said Alan. "And to the hope that one of these days, something you write will actually tell me how to get my retirement fund back."

Don laughed. "Keep dreaming, dad."

There was a knock on the door, and Charlie jumped up to answer it. "David! Glad you decided to drop by." He peered out and saw the rest of the FBI team standing behind David. "Oh. You guys don't look like you came by to celebrate. Another case?"

"Yep," said Colby, his expression blank.

"Well, hey, guys," Don greeted, joining Charlie at the door. "Come by for some free beer?"

"Charlie, can you step out here for a minute?" asked David, consciously ignoring Don's greeting. Charlie joined him, surprised when David put a hand on his shoulder and held him.

Colby stepped forward, pulling out his handcuffs. "Don Eppes, you're under arrest for fraud. Put your hands behind your back, please."

Don raised his eyebrows with a grin. "Guys, it's not April fool's day."

"And I'm not fooling, Don," said Colby, his bearing quiet and sober. "Don't make this harder than it is. Hands behind your back."

Don obeyed, a hint of worry beginning to show when Colby actually cuffed him. He glanced at Charlie, the person most likely to reveal it in his expression should this simply be an elaborate prank.

"Look," said David. "This isn't even our case, the financial crimes unit caught it. We're just making the arrest because they figured it would go down quietly this way. I'm sorry."

Charlie's heart sank to the depths of his stomach when Colby started to escort his brother towards the back of a waiting car, and he tried to run towards Don. David was still gripping his shoulder, and he wrapped his arms around Charlie and held him, ignoring his struggles while Don climbed into the back of the sedan in a shocked stupor.

Only then did David let go, talking to Charlie quietly. "I'm sorry. I really am. We're taking him to the office, and you can ride down there with me. You need to understand this isn't our case, and we need to tread carefully if any of us want to stay involved at all. Understand?" Charlie nodded with a gulp, watching the sedan drive away with Don in the back seat.

"What can I do?" asked Alan from the doorway, speaking for the first time. His remarkable calm was betrayed by the beer bottle at his feet where it had fallen, forgotten, from his hand.

Charlie took a deep breath, trying to clear his head. "Uh – dad – call my lawyer. The guy I used when I sent that research to Pakistan. And – um – let Robin know. I – I gotta go."

"He didn't do this, did he?" asked Alan.

"Do you really have to ask?" snapped Charlie. "Of course he didn't. He didn't commit the Kennedy assassination, either."

"Boys – listen," interrupted Liz. "We're not jumping to any conclusions, but you don't arrest an agent like Don without solid evidence. This isn't going away."


	2. Chapter 2

**FBI OFFICE, EVENING OF DON'S ARREST**

Special Agent Victor Nychev was beginning to cave to the pleas of one very concerned math professor to be allowed to watch his brother's interrogation. His first instinct had been to throw the curly-haired pest out on his ass, but he'd always been a sucker for desperate sincerity.

"Look – I won't say anything, I won't do anything, and for the thirtieth time I don't think you're going to beat my brother. But he is my brother, and he is innocent, and if I've learned anything about the FBI it's that most of you are decent people. So please, please let me do what it is I do," said Charlie, his voice cracking.

Nychev shifted on his desk. "Hey – the part of me that wants to make damn sure agent Eppes doesn't go down for something he didn't do is willing to have this case vetted by anyone, including you. The part of me that wants to win when this thing gets to court has serious reservations about allowing you or any member of his team anywhere near the investigation."

"Look," said David, who had earned Charlie's eternal gratitude in the last hour for championing their joint request to at least be allowed to follow Don's case. "Don's one of the most loyal guys I know, and I'm pretty sure he'd die to protect any of us. But he wouldn't tamper with evidence to let one of us skate on a crime we committed. He wouldn't expect any of us to do it, either. But if he's innocent…."

"He's not," said Nychev bluntly. "I'm sorry, I really am. This is a good case."

"Then you have nothing to lose," said Charlie.

Nychev sighed. "Okay. Here's how it's going to be. You can watch the interrogation, and you can follow the investigation. But if any of you so much as breathe on evidence, or use FBI resources or speak to a witness before clearing it with me first, you will go to jail for obstruction. Got it?"

"Thank you," said Charlie, closing his eyes in relief. "I won't be a problem for you, I promise."

Agent Nychev stood and glanced at his watch. "Be in the booth in fifteen minutes." With that, he walked away, and Charlie and David joined the rest of the team in the break room.

**OBSERVATION BOOTH, FBI INTERVIEW ROO**M

Charlie and David entered, taking their places between two watching agents from the financial crimes unit. Don was sitting alone, handcuffed to the table, his head down and to the side to the camera couldn't capture his expression. The sight hit Charlie in the gut with more force than he ever could have anticipated, and he turned away, gulping.

David spoke to him very quietly. "You need to be prepared for the fact that this could be tough for you to watch, okay? If you can't handle it, there's no shame in leaving, but you need to keep it together. You can always watch the tapes."

"I can handle it," said Charlie, the credibility of his words somewhat lessened by his pale expression and inability to face the window again.

Agent Nychev entered the interrogation room, setting down a file on the table and introducing himself. Don explored the agent's face without replying. Nychev motioned at the handcuffs. "Will I regret taking those off?"

"No," said Don, his voice quiet. Even Charlie couldn't read him; he'd shut off every hint of expression.

Nychev released him and sat down. "Let's not play games, Eppes. You know what this is about. You planning to lawyer up and give us the silent treatment, or you gonna make my life easier and confess?"

Don studied the other agent silently for more than a minute, observing his expression, body language, even his eye movement. "I've been sitting here over an hour, and I'm still wondering what on earth is happening."

Nychev slid a paper across the table to Don. "Your arrest warrant." Another followed it rapid-fire. "Your offshore account. Balance one point five million dollars, deposited in hundred-thousand dollar increments." Another paper. "Your donations to your temple, support groups for crime vicims, and five children's centers, each considerably larger than your annual salary."

They were coming faster now, far exceeding Don's ability to examine them, and finally Nychev slammed the whole file down in front of him.

"You set up a dummy website to pretend to be an affiliate of Werman Brothers promoting an exclusive, closed-end hedge fund for major investors. You sent phishing emails to members of Werman Brothers client list implying major returns in an emerging growth industry, and then you pocketed the money."

Don buried his forehead in his hands. "Look – I know how this is going to sound, but I didn't do this." He raised his head and looked directly at Nychev. "I know this job, and I know what conclusions I'd be drawing in your place. But I'm innocent. I'm looking you right in the eyes and telling you I have nothing to do with this, so please just keep that in your mind when you examine this case."

Nychev lowered his glance and sighed. "You sure know what buttons to push. But I've done some looking into your history. For such a decorated agent, you don't exactly have a shining record of respect for the law. I was particularly fascinated by the Robin Hood case. You let a felon walk, because you empathized with his actions. Was that where this started? Maybe you respected what he'd done, and started thinking that the only way to really make a difference in the world was to step outside the law. Is that what happened?"

Don smiled. "No. But good interrogation technique."

Nychev couldn't resist a small return smile. "They don't let you run a team unless you're good. You're good, Eppes. You've done amazing things for the bureau, but that doesn't get you a free pass to break the law, no matter how much you think you deserve it."

Don shook his head. "Seriously? You think I feel like this job owes me something? I think I owe every person I didn't save in time. That's it." He picked up the folder in front of him. "Looks a lot like the kind of circumstantial evidence you'd find if someone were trying to frame an FBI agent."

Nychev looked at him without a hint of readable expression on his face. "Your brother's in the booth. You want to make him watch the next part?"

Don's glanced directly into the monitors, his expression one of sudden pain. "Charlie –" He looked away and groaned before looking at the one-way glass separating them. "You don't have to watch this, buddy."

"Last chance," said Nychev, his voice hard. He sat on the table next to Don, leaning close to the other agent as he withdrew a portable recorder from his pocket. When Don didn't respond, he pressed play.


	3. Chapter 3

**FBI INTERVIEW ROOM**

Don's laugh crackled from the recorder. "Yeah, took it right off 'em."

Another laugh responded. "Oh, I love it. About time someone bled those rich bastards for a few drops."

"No kidding," said Don. "About time."

"Speaking of time, how long you been running this little scam?"

"Oh, about five, six months now."

"Who-eee! Easy money man, easy money. How much you taken in?"

"Roughly one and a half million. How's that for pocket change?"

"Not bad, my friend. Not bad at all. Whatcha gonna do with it all?"

"Oh, I dunno. Booze, strippers…." Don laughed. "Nah, I'm more of a good works kinda guy at heart. Probably give most of it to charity – you know, children's centers, help out crime victims, that sorta thing."

"Well, you're a better bastard than I am. I steal that kinda money, take that kinda risk, I'm all about numero uno."

"Oh, don't get me wrong, I like to have fun. Gotta enjoy myself a little before this life catches up with me."

"That's what I'm talkin' about. Man if I had that kinda cash, I'd shag your brother's girlfriend. Real hottie, that one. Doe eyes, legs, dirty little lips –"

"Don't tempt me, buddy," Don laughed again. "You've got no idea how easy it'd be to cross that line. Good thing I got all my money to keep me company at night."

"Well, nice talk. You'll remember an old pal, right?"

"Oh, you won't be hurting for beer money any time soon. I gotta go back to my life of crime. Nice hearing from you."

Nychev turned the recorder off with a definitive click, and slammed it down on the table in front of him. "That is the sound of an FBI agent who's going to be doing some serious prison time. Now I know you didn't have the technical skills to pull this off on your own. You know the game. You gonna tell me who you're in this with, maybe save us having to identify your bloody corpse in a prison yard after the people you put away are done with play time?"

Don's expression was utterly blank; the face of a man who had just thrown up an unmovable wall between himself and the events around him. "What the – no." He took a deep breath. "I – think I better talk to a lawyer."

Charlie knew far too well what going into shock felt like, but he'd never known it could happen just from watching a conversation. David stood motionless, experiencing his own form of the world spinning off its axis, and it was one of the financial crimes agents who stood and put a hand gently on Charlie's arm. "Your brother's right," he said. "You don't have to watch this. I feel like a heartless bastard just letting you be in here right now."

Charlie was staring blankly at the window, and his brain took a good thirty seconds to hear and process the agent's words. "He didn't tell me to leave. I'm staying. I'll need all the data I can-" he stopped himself, feeling tears rising dangerously close to the surface and remembering David's firm instructions about not losing it. Don wasn't data. This wasn't a case. His brother couldn't be reduced to that -

"You guys need to run an analysis on that recording. It's the audio version of one of those ransom notes made out of newspaper clippings, pieced together from other conversations – the cadence is off, Don would never say those things, not like that."

The agent rubbed Charlie's arm, genuine compassion showing on his face. "Vic already had the techs do that."

"I want to do it again. I want to run it at Cal Sci."

"Okay, we'll get you a copy. I'm sure Vic'll give you copies of anything you need. Tell you what, let's step out for a few minutes and get some coffee, okay?"

"No," said Charlie, not meaning it as shortly as the word came out. He revised his answer. "Thank you. I just have to – I have to be here. If it were Don, he wouldn't leave me."

"Listen," Don snapped in the interview room. "I revoke my waiver of counsel. Put the damn cuffs back on, take your tape recorder, and go call my lawyer. I didn't do this, I didn't have that conversation, and I'm not going to give you a false confession with a bow on top."

"Oh, so we've stopped playing nice, now?"

"You stopped playing nice when you brought my brother into this, and so did I. Go get my lawyer."

**BREAK ROOM, FBI OFFICE**

Robin was frozen at the counter, her coffee forgotten as she thumbed through the case file. The prosecutor in her recognized a conviction when she saw it. Fragments of moments were flitting through her head. Strange looks and broken-off conversations at the office, her boss eying her with pity. Awkward silences around the financial crimes unit.

Don, the unflappable hard-ass, looking unsettled walking into a maximum security prison. Don, shocking her with compassion where she expected intolerance. Don with his head in her lap, looking up at her with pure adoration. Don, fulfilling her childish rescue fantasies in an all too real manner, hugging her after he'd saved her life.

"Your hands are shaking," said Charlie, beginning to pour himself a cup of coffee. "Are you all right?" His hideously awkward question was made even weaker by the shake in his own hands which, seconds later, resulted in copious amounts of coffee spilled on the counter.

Colby gently removed the cup from his hand and began to wipe up the coffee. "Word of advice? Don't try to take on the big brother role." He gave Charlie a comforting grin. "It's not your thing."

Charlie gave a weak laugh and turned back to Robin, attributing his discomfort in her presence to Don's rigid separation of his romantic involvements from his daily life. There had been times, he reflected, that he had been tempted to ask if they were still dating – then he would see them together, and see a rare glimpse of true joy in his brother's eyes. That alone was enough for him not to ask too many questions.

Robin stared back at him, her face blank. She tried to speak, but her voice broke and she looked away. Charlie tried again, his own heart hurting for her because he knew that place. "My lawyer's on the way, he'll arrange bail while I start analyzing these –"

Robin's eyes filled with a watery haze as she shook her head too rapidly. "They won't grant it – the judge won't grant it. Don's a flight risk." She drew her breath in sharply, almost a sob but not quite. "Don – Don's a flight risk? God Charlie – help. Help him, please." She shoved the file into his hands. "Help him. I can't –" tears were running down her cheeks, and she snatched her briefcase and marched towards the elevator.

Charlie spun towards Colby. "Are you kidding me? This is – this is white collar crime, and they won't grant bail? I've seen you guys cut murder suspects loose! Gangsters get to walk out of here and my brother the FBI agent gets held without bail?"

Colby deflected Charlie's fury with upraised hands. "Yeah. Messed up. Crap like this is why I never practiced law. But I gotta figure Robin knows what she's talking about."

**FBI INTERVIEW ROOM**

So this is what capture shock feels like.

Don stood and allowed Nychev to cuff his hands behind his back.

How many suspects have I done this to? How many of them were innocent just like me and scared to death? Don tried to steady himself, his heart racing in his chest the way it had during his first shootout, but this was lacking the exhilarating part of an adrenaline rush. This was pure fear. How on earth was this more unsettling than being shot at?

Nychev cuffed him lightly on the back, a compassionate gesture that snapped him out of his momentary panic. "Hey. Professional duties aside, I truly am sorry to be doing this."

Don looked back at him and swallowed hard. "I – had to shoot my ex-partner." Nychev nodded, the two of them at an understanding. He touched Don on the arm. "Let's go."

Don nodded and walked out at his side, taking a last glance around the office. It filled him with a sudden and unexpected feeling of love. A sense that if his life effectively ended now, at least he had known this.

David stepped out of the bull pen and ran up to them, and Don's heart sank. He spoke first, in an attempt to clear his throat of the choking hurt within. "Take good care of everyone for me, okay buddy?"

David nodded. "Of course. And we're looking over the case right now. You take care, okay?"

Don couldn't reply, and he looked away. Facing his own men in handcuffs was simply not something he could handle. "Let's go," he said to Nychev, his voice hard.


	4. Chapter 4

**WAR ROOM, FBI OFFICE, 0330 AM**

David hung up the phone with the detention center and addressed the group. "He's there. He met with Charlie's lawyer, and they just logged him into the solitary confinement unit. The arraignment's set for the day after tomorrow. Charlie, your FBI credentials will get you in any time you need to talk with him, but Alan will have to see him within visiting hours."

"Solitary confinement?" Charlie's voice broke. "Why? What – why are they doing that?" He turned away from them, fighting tears.

David walked over to Charlie, putting a hand on his shoulder. "Because he's a federal agent. It's for his protection. They put him in the general population, they'd find him dead or tortured half to death within the hour."

David held him a little more tightly, knowing his words had hardly the reassuring effect he wanted. "They're keeping him safe, that's all." Charlie nodded, a halfhearted, heartbroken nod.

"Charlie - isn't that where they held you? When they brought you in after that whole Pakistan thing?" Another nod. "And you handled it just fine. No offense, but Don's a hell of a lot tougher than you are."

Charlie raised his head and met David's eyes, something the agent knew both Don and Charlie well enough to recognize as a sign of trust. "For two days. I was there for less than two days, and I went voluntarily. One of the guards asked me for my autograph! They practically pampered me and I was still scared to death. Don – Don hates being alone. He won't even spend the night in his own apartment unless it's with Robin."

David had to look away. It was painful enough to process this without learning new ways for his gut to twist in a knot. "Don's a lot more than our boss. We can't work this case on the clock, but you can bet we won't be getting a lot of sleep around here until this is cleared up."

"If it can be," said Nikki. "Look, I might as well be the bitch that says this – we _are_ all assuming he's innocent."

Liz shot her a look that could have slain a demon. "If you have to say that, you don't know Don."

"I haven't dated Don, you mean. I'm just sayin' – loyalty doesn't always have to be blind. Good cops go dirty, it happens every day."

Colby faced her with a direct stare. "I'm alive because of blind loyalty. Don's, in fact. If you can't have faith in your people, then you've got nothing."

Nikki took a step back in spite of herself, throwing up her hands. "Okay, fine. Give me the damn koolaid and I'll be at my desk when you need me." She walked out, passing Amita on her way through the door.

Amita ran to Charlie and hugged him. "Alan called me. Is Don here? How can I help?"

Charlie returned the hug, continuing to cling to her arms as though she were a lifeboat after they separated. "Don's been framed for online investment fraud, and he's going to – they're holding him in solitary without bail, and when they took him out of the building he didn't even want to talk to any of us, and they have a tape with his voice on it they say –"

Amita kissed him to silence the flood. "It's going to be okay. Don's going to be okay. What can I do?" She held him, reassuring him and trying to ground him with her touch. Charlie returned her kiss with sudden passion and turned to face the rest of the team, sans Nikki.

"Okay – Amita and I will take a close look at those online accounts and financial records shortly, but assuming the FBI techs already looked for obvious misdirects, we're going to need some possible suspects to compare the results against before we can extract any useful data. Ahh – motive."

He started scribbling on the board. "Revenge, right? Don's arrested a lot of people, I'm sure some of them would have vindictive tendencies which might motivate them to do something like this."

Liz nodded. "And you, Charlie. It's not unthinkable that someone wants to strike at you through Don."

Charlie closed his eyes. "What you're saying is I could be responsible for this. That Don's-"

"No," said David, his voice sharp. "What she's saying is that you both work for the FBI, you're both potential targets, and striking at family is a traditionally sadistic means of revenge. Because it's a valid theory doesn't make you responsible for someone else's actions."

Charlie gritted his teeth and forced his way through, accepting David's words only as a coping mechanism. "Okay, what else?"

"Diversion," said Colby. "Maybe a case you or Don is working on, maybe someone figures with Don in jail, the case dies."

David nodded. "Appeals, too. We should look at anyone who has a trial or an appeal pending where Don was a lead investigator or has key testimony. He loses credibility to a jury if he's accused of a felony himself."

Charlie wrote down the theories. "Okay – so we're going to need the files of every case Don and I are working on, every pending trial, and every person Don's ever sent to jail."

Colby leaned over and pretended to whisper in David's ear. "He doesn't ask much."

"Nope, never does," agreed David.

"That money, in the offshore account – is it real?" asked Charlie.

David double-checked the files. "Yep, and so were the charity donations. The account's frozen, so someone's out a little over a million and a half dollars. Expensive frame job."

"They could've had him killed for a lot less," commented Liz.

"Thanks – thanks for that," muttered Charlie with a mock glare that carried just a hint of real anger. "Okay. So we're looking at an organization, a person, or a company that's either so big that they write off over a million dollars without blinking, or a smaller operation with their entire future riding on whatever motivated them to do this."

"Plus access to some serious computer experts," said Amita. "This is high-end hacking, in multiple fields. I mean, to set up a dummy website so successfully, link all of the IP addresses to Don, set up and fund the offshore account – I'm almost thinking they would have had to use several different experts."

"Okay, money, technological expertise…" Charlie scribbled on the board some more, then stopped and rubbed his forehead. "The recording – in order to create a composite that would make it past the FBI lab, they would need sophisticated sound mixing equipment."

David was shaking his head. "What kind of outfit spends this much money and devotes all these resources just to set up an FBI agent for white-collar fraud? I mean, say he's convicted. It'll destroy him, but at the worst he'll serve maybe a few years."

Colby looked down. "Unless someone on the inside really wants to get their hands on him personally. Maybe getting him into prison is just the first part of the plan."

Amita gave him a sideways, horrified look, and he shrugged. "You don't solve cases by being squeamish, even if they do involve your friends."

Charlie took control of the room again, somehow managing to block out the exchange. "Now. If any of us develop alternate theories, Amita and I need to know so we can factor them into our research. If you guys can start working on accessing those files, I'm going to make analyzing the recording my first priority. Amita – can you get a group of TAs together at Cal Sci to help enter all this data? We're going to have to write a program to analyze it and filter the results."

"Okay," said Amita, picking up her laptop bag and kissing him lightly on the cheek. "I'm going to go get started."

"Okay. Bye. And – thank you."

"I talked to Victor Nychev about the recording a little while ago, he said he'd get it over here in a few hours," said David.

Charlie set the marker down and ran his fingers through his hair. "While I wait for that tape, I'm going to go see Don."

Colby, David, and Liz all exchanged uneasy glances. After an awkward silence, Colby stood. "Come on. I'll drive you down there."


	5. Chapter 5

**US HWY 10, SANTA MONICA FREEWAY**

"Wait," said Charlie suddenly. "This isn't the way to the detention center."

"Nope, it isn't," admitted Colby. He glanced over at Charlie. "I'm kidnapping you for a few hours. Just trust me, okay?"

"Okay," said Charlie finally, too exhausted physically and emotionally to argue.

"Lean the seat back, try to catch a nap," suggested Colby. "It'll help."

**EARLY MORNING, EPPES RESIDENCE**

"Well – I appreciate the visit," said Alan. "I have to admit I'm going to be a little jumpy around official visitors from now on, considering that twice now I've had one of my very law-abiding sons hauled off in handcuffs."

David chuckled. "You're just in denial that you've raised a couple of felons."

Alan looked over at David, and after a long, reflective moment asked, "How is Charlie handling this?"

David sighed and leaned back in his chair, meeting Alan's gaze with his own forthright look. "It's Charlie in full-blown panic mode. He's – he's dealing with his emotions by trying to be Don."

Alan raised his eyebrows. "I'll bet that's a bundle of joy and delight."

David couldn't resist a small, conspiratorial smile. "It's somewhere between endearing and infuriating," he admitted. "But – if putting himself in charge of the investigation, demanding Iron-Mountain sized stacks of files, and playing big brother to Robin keeps him from breaking down completely, I'll take it."

"Are you sure you're not a father?" asked Alan.

"Sometimes when Don's away, I start to feel like one," said David with a wry look.

"Where is Charlie now? I'd better bring Donny junior some food, it's not like he'll remember on his own."

"Sometime around five-thirty this morning, he announced his intention to march into the detention center to see his brother. Colby took him for a drive." David grinned. "He may or may not remember to feed him, it is Colby after all."

**VENICE PIER, MORNING AFTER DON'S ARREST**

Charlie followed Colby out of the car and over to a sloping bluff that overlooked the coastline. "We went surfing here. All of us and – Don."

"Yup," said Colby, looking out across the water. "And a couple years ago, I was out there on a boat with my whole team having written me off as a traitor."

Charlie gulped. He turned away from the FBI agent, rubbing his forehead and pacing.

"I've had a lot of shrinks and a lot of friends talk to me about what happened out there. But what nobody asks me about is what it felt like to be hauled in by my own team."

Charlie stopped dead and turned to face him. The generally stoic Colby wore a uniquely vulnerable, unguarded expression on his face that cut through Charlie's racing thoughts and emotions.

Colby met his eyes squarely despite the pain on his face. "I'd gotten assigned to investigate these guys, and they turned into my family. I had to let them cuff me, haul me into my own damn interrogation room, and think I was a traitor. I'd rather be beaten to death than go through that again and have to see the expressions on their faces."

"I'm so sorry," said Charlie, now hurting almost as much for Colby as he was for Don. "We should have believed in you more, I can't imagine –"

Colby cut him off. "You all believed in me enough to ignore evidence, betrayal and a confession and come save my life. Point is, I know Don's in misery right now whether he's guilty or not. When it's your own outfit, it hurts. But he also knows how hard we'll be fighting for him." Colby gave Charlie a sheepish smile. "This is a really long way to say I understand, and that I'm going to do everything in my power to get Don out of there."

"Thanks – I guess," said Charlie, a frown coming unbidden to his forehead. "I'm sensing a 'but' here."

"Don't hate me when I say this, okay? I get your need to try and control this situation. Problem is, you're gonna end up stepping on some toes if you act like the FBI is at your beck and call on this one. And I'd think twice about barging into the detention center at five in the morning like you own the place."

Charlie frowned. "I don't think that!"

"You're acting like it," said Colby.

"Look – David made it abundantly clear to me – Nychev too – that if we want to maintain access to Don's case, I have to keep it together and be professional. That's what I'm doing. Or – trying to, anyway. I know that's not traditionally my strongest point when people I care about are involved, and if I screw this up, I – I could never forgive myself."

Charlie sighed and started pacing, prowling the small bluff several times before coming up with a coherent admission "Every time something terrible has happened in our family, and during every single case, Don's been there." He stopped pacing and faced Colby with his own moment of truth. "I don't know – how to do this without him."

Colby gave him a look of sympathy. "You don't have to. By the time we get back to LA, it'll be a halfway decent hour and you can go see him."

"Okay," said Charlie. He ventured an apologetic glance at Colby. "I – didn't mean to step out of line."

**US DOJ METROPOLI****TAIN DETENTION CENTER**

"This – this isn't like a Colby thing, is it?" asked Charlie, his desperate hope transparent. "Are you doing something undercover?"

Don shook his head, speaking gently. "No, buddy. I'm afraid this is for real."

Charlie looked away and rubbed his eyes, trying to cover the sudden impulse to cry.

"Listen, buddy, can you do me a favor?" asked Don, his voice unusually quiet. Charlie nodded. "Robin can't have anything to do with me or my case, since it's her office that – that'll be prosecuting me. Just get in touch, tell her I understand and it's okay? Maybe give her a hug for me?"

Charlie couldn't breathe. He struggled, closing his eyes and fighting the physical pain of trying to deny his emotions. His eyes were stinging and something was squeezing his heart and his gut like a vise. Somewhere in the background, he heard his brother stand, and seconds later he was enveloped in Don's arms, gasping as tears streamed down his cheeks.

"It's okay, buddy, it's okay." Charlie felt his big brother kiss him briefly on the top of the head moments before strong hands jerked him away and restrained him.

A second guard grabbed Don's arm, twisting it and slamming him down hard on the table. The side of his face hit the metal surface with a crack that made Charlie instantly sick to his stomach. The guard handcuffed him and jerked him upright, and Charlie struggled in rage that was fueled by a devastating fear for his brother. "Stop! Stop! He didn't do anything."

The guard holding Charlie was gentler and considerably stronger, and simply maintained a firm grip on the younger Eppes as Don was marched out of the room.

The metal door closed behind Don and his escort, and Charlie felt himself go limp. The guard released him and guided him to a chair, surprising Charlie with a calming pat on the shoulder. "We're going to have to search you before you leave, to make sure he didn't slip you anything."

Charlie nodded, barely comprehending. He was acutely aware of the warmth of tears covering his cheeks, and he found it odd that he wasn't sobbing, wasn't feeling anything, and – where were all these tears coming from then? Thoughts spun in his head, assaulting him, defying quantification and analysis. "Is Don in trouble? Did – did I get Donny in trouble?" His voice was almost inaudible.

"Nah," said the guard, giving him an understanding glance. "It's not like things don't get pretty intense in here, every day. It's really helpful for people on the inside to know they have people that care about them, you know."

"Social – social networks strengthen the bonds between –" Charlie closed his eyes, fighting himself. He knew this tipping point, and could feel his ability to grasp and cope with what was around him slipping away. "Can I have a pen?" There was a set theory string that Amita had mentioned that could fit into the P vs. NP problem, if only he could figure out –

"No." The guard's voice was gentle. "Let's get you out of here, okay?"

Charlie nodded, blindly obeying the officer's steady grip on his arm as he was helped up and guided down the hall. The geometric pattern of the bars on one of the doors caught his attention, the same pattern that had fascinated him when he was the prisoner and a guard was guiding him through a different series of doors.

There was a white wall in front of his face, and somewhere in the background of his consciousness he was aware of obeying an order to put his palms on the wall for a search. The wall spun, and he blinked, trying to clear his vision of that same white wall in a hospital.

You mother is dying, Charlie.

Charlie pressed his forehead against the wall as hard as he could, his eyes clenched tightly shut.

Don Eppes, you're under arrest for fraud. Please place your hands behind your back.

Pain ripped through his forehead, burning and stinging as he struggled to stand, nauseated and unable to move as Amita was dragged away from him into a van. Flames and bodies and – why couldn't he breathe?

"His brother's the FBI agent being held here, they had a pretty emotional meeting and he just went into shock."

Wait. Wait. That voice was real.

Charlie opened his eyes, hoping he wasn't about to vomit. "How'd I get on the floor?" He blinked, recognizing the man who had just entered as one of the guards he'd interacted with during his own brief stay. "Anderson?"

"Hey, kiddo." The guard smiled in greeting and knelt down next to him. "You came to visit your brother." It wasn't a question, and Charlie nodded. "He's fine, you know. He's coping really well."

Charlie focused on breathing and chasing away ghosts, trying not to be utterly humiliated by the fact that he'd managed a total meltdown in front of a bunch of federal detention officers, or by the fact that he'd somehow wound up on the floor with his head on fire when he knew nobody had hit him.

"You're -?"

"Yeah, I'm working his unit. He just asked me to come check on you."

"Is he okay?" asked Charlie, trying to sit up and finding that the room swung around, tempting him once again to throw up. Anderson helped him sit with surprising gentleness.

"Easy, kiddo. I know what you just saw was pretty violent, but someone like your brother – it just doesn't faze him. He's back upstairs with a bloody nose, cracking jokes and worrying about you."

"Look – he's innocent. I don't know how I'm going to prove it, but just –"

Anderson cut him off with an understanding look. "Hey. Mixed in with all the gangsters and killers and general scumbags we get through here, there's a fair number of guys who're innocent, end up with dropped charges, even stray math prodigies trying to right the wrongs of the world. None of us like dirty cops, but your brother deserves the benefit of the doubt until a jury says otherwise, okay? I reckon society at least owes him that for everything he's put on the line, and we're gonna make sure he's safe and sound."

Charlie felt a portion of the all-encompassing tension leave his body, and his heart began to take its rightful spot back down in his chest. Anderson gave him a brief smile and helped him to his feet, sparing Charlie the need to reply.

"Seems you two spend more effort worrying about each other than you do yourselves. Come on, I'll walk you out."


	6. Chapter 6

_Author's note: You know that timeless admonition to write what you know? Well, we're coming up against a small problem here; what I know about math would probably embarrass the average fifth-grader. Any of you to whom math is not a four-letter word want to beta some upcoming math-related bits for me? Otherwise I'll just make this considerably lighter on math than the average episode, my plot will work either way._

_Also, this fic was started before the airing of "Ultimatum." Considering some plot similarities, I'm going to officially set this story before "Ultimatum," otherwise the characters in this fic would have to spend a lot more time referring to the events in that episode._

**EPPES RESIDENCE**

Alan's eyes tracked his younger son as he walked in with his head averted from the living room, set down his messenger bag, and headed out to the garage. Without much delay, Alan removed two iced coffee drinks from the refrigerator and followed.

"How'd it go at the detention center?"

Charlie didn't answer, instead choosing to write on the chalkboard at a furious pace.

"Charlie?"

"Not now, dad."

"Yes, now. He's not just your brother, he's my son, and I want to hear how it went."

Charlie spun around in what a less familiar person might have read as anger, and Alan handed him one of the glasses, taking the opportunity to briefly squeeze his younger son's hand in a mix of comfort and appeal.

Charlie's voice was hard and high-pitched. "It went great. I broke down in front of all the guards, got Don hurt, went into crazy math obsession mode, and managed to somehow pass out on the floor to make things even more humiliating. I'll be lucky if they ever let me set foot in the place again."

Alan nodded, setting aside Charlie's disturbing outburst for the moment. "And Don? How is he coping with all this?"

Charlie took a deep breath and swallowed several mouthfuls of the coffee. "He's being – Don."

"So he's okay, then. He's hanging in there?"

Charlie nodded. "He – asked me to give Robin a hug for him."

Seeing the brokenhearted look that accompanied Charlie's last words, Alan put a soft hand on the side of his son's arm. "I don't know how I wound up with two such stubborn, soft-hearted sons. But I do know you've both gotten through everything life has thrown at you, and Don is going to make it through this."

"I hate this, you know. I just hate it. It never goes away – I – I've gotten so I can be at crime scenes without wanting to throw up or pass out, I've even gotten better at being shot at-"

"Music to any father's ears," commented Alan.

"-but I can't shake this incapacitating mental - I don't even know what - when the people I love the most need me to be – to be my best."

Alan sighed. "You know, I raised two wonderful, beautifully compassionate sons, a fact of which I couldn't be more proud. I don't think I've met a wrong in this world you two boys didn't want try and right. But there is another trait you and your brother share, both in your own unique ways, and that's your nearly debilitating tendency to make it all about yourselves when the – ah – coprolite hits the fan."

Charlie looked back at him, wounded. "About me? Dad – the reason I can't cope is because every thought I have is about Don, and what he's thinking, and what he's going through, and what if I can't clear him and he –"

Alan stopped him by grabbing one of his waving hands and holding it still. "My point is, it's Donny's future at stake here, not yours. It does appear that the application of your skills is the best chance he has, so what matters is using that gift to bring him home. It doesn't matter how upset you are, or how humiliating it is, or how you cope."

Charlie blinked, a very confused, curly-haired deer in the headlights. "And – when I can't? I – I think I passed out in there. I was having these flashbacks, and-"

Alan led Charlie over to a chair and sat down opposite him, carefully suppressing any expression of the worry it caused him to feel Charlie's hands shaking, or to hear his comment about getting Don hurt. "Then you sit there and go through whatever it is you have to go through. People understand more than you think, Charlie. To be honest, it's probably a relief to people that there are some things you aren't good at. It makes them like you, not look down on you."

"I try so hard not to embody the stereotypes. Crazy mathematician. Academic with poor social skills. Arrogant genius. Helpless little brother. I – turned into most of those today, and –" he threw up his hands. "There I go – making it about me again."

"You know another wonderful thing about you and Donny? You both listen, and you learn from your mistakes." The elder Eppes sipped at his coffee. "I would appreciate it though, if you'd spend as little time as possible heartsick, and as much as you can getting my son out of jail. I need him to help me transplant those hedges."

**BULL PEN, FBI OFFICE, TWO DAYS AFTER DON'S ARREST**

David looked up with a weary smile of greeting when Charlie half walked, half stumbled up to his desk. The young professor was unshaven and had exhaustion written all over him, but his gaze was clear and intense. "Any progress?" David asked.

"Yes – and no," said Charlie. "This recording – I'm ninety percent sure they took recordings of Don saying those lines, probably on his cell phone, at different times and in completely different contexts, and spliced them together with recordings of our setup guy."

"Can you prove that in court?" asked Colby.

Charlie rubbed his forehead. "No," he admitted. "Not mathematically, and not in court. This is more of an informed hunch. The thing is - I need permission to send it outside the FBI."

"Where to?" asked David.

Charlie shifted uncomfortably. "To Fort Mead. This composite – it's very, very good, and I think I need their help. They have far more supercomputing power than Cal Sci, and one of their guys specializes in this sort of thing."

"No offense Charlie, but why is the NSA going to be interested in this case? It's way off their radar," said Colby.

Charlie gave him a slightly embarrassed look. "I – ah – I'm one of their more valuable consultants." He glanced away, as was his tendency when trying not to sound arrogant about his status. "I've got friends there, and they owe me some favors."

"Okay," accepted David with a small grin. Sometimes it _was_ easy to forget that Charlie was one of the top minds in the world; a person just wasn't accustomed to someone of Charlie's stature hanging around an FBI office solving murder cases.

"Wait – I thought the best geeks were all working outside the Triple Fence these days," said Colby.

Charlie's half-smile contained a gleam of mischief. "Supposedly."

"Jesus Christ, is there any agency you don't work for?" asked Colby.

"Well – ah – the CIA and I had a falling out a while back," said Charlie, wincing. "I might have used language that Alan wouldn't be proud of – let's just say if a few individuals in that agency were to vanish, I wouldn't have too much of a problem with it."

David and Colby exchanged glances, and David stood. "I'll go talk to Victor Nychev about the recording."

**CAL SCI, CHARLIE'S OFFICE, THREE DAYS AFTER DON'S ARREST**

Amita massaged Charlie's shoulders, bending over to kiss him on the cheek. "You look exhausted. Have you even slept since Don was arrested?"

Charlie turned his head and kissed her back. "Not officially. It's going to take so long to enter all this data as the FBI gives it to me, I want to make sure all the TAs are up to speed on what to enter, and I'm still debugging this program –"

"I can help you with the debugging," said Amita. "Why don't you take a nap, and let me finish it."

Charlie closed his eyes, his head drooping. "Okay. I just – I'm finding it hard to work here. I feel like I should be at the FBI, but I don't want to get in the way of their regular cases."

"Speaking of," said Amita, raising her head. "Hi there."

"Hi, Amita," said Liz, walking up to the desk. "Wow, Charlie – you look awful. Listen – I just came by because we identified a suspect, and Vic Nychev agreed to interview him. If you want in, I can drive you to the office."

**WAR ROOM, FBI OFFICE**

David pointed to the main screen. "See this guy? That's Cliff Howard, the dude Don sent away for murder a number of years back. Served over a year in prison before a second murder with the same MO cropped up, and Don happened to catch the case. Exonerates the guy, but not before he spends an awful lot of time thinking he's not gonna be with his family again until after his kid graduates high school."

He flashed another photo up on the screen. "This is Dave Gonzalez, he did time with our guy. They were friends, and it turns out he's got big money connections. Gang stuff, mob tie-ins – if he wanted to help a buddy by setting up Don, he could pull the strings."

**OBSERVATION BOOTH, FBI INTERVIEW ROOM**

Charlie felt himself tense when Nychev walked into the room, even though this time it wasn't Don sitting at the table. "What am I accused of this time?" asked Cliff Howard.

"Nothing, yet," said Nychev, sitting down across from him. "I just want to ask you a few questions about a case we're working. You remember Special Agent Don Eppes?"

Howard gave him an incredulous glare. "You don't forget the guy who sends you away for murder."

Nychev nodded. "No, I don't imagine one does. In fact, I imagine you'd think about it a lot." Howard was silent. "Maybe you'd think maybe it was time for Agent Eppes to know what it was like to go down for something you didn't do?"

"What?" asked Howard, looking genuinely confused.

"Agent Eppes has been arrested for fraud, and we're looking at evidence that someone set him up. Framed him. Now what sort of guy might be interested in doing a thing like that?"

Howard sighed, staring almost blankly at the table for a minute, considering his reply. When it came, his voice was thick with anger and regret. "Look – I know I got a record, and in cop world that means I'm automatically guilty of whatever you think I did. But I'm not some pissed-off sadist out for revenge. I don't think anybody should have to go through what I did, and if I was gonna have it out for anybody it'd be the dumb-ass lawyer that pled me guilty without looking closer at the case."

"I find that pretty hard to believe," said Nychev.

"Hey, all I wanted out of Eppes was for him to look me in the eye and tell me he was wrong and he was sorry. He did that, an' he listened to what I had to say to him. That's a hard thing for a cop to do. Yeah, I was pretty pissed when it went down, but Eppes did right by me in the end."

Nychev stood and extended his hand. "Well, I think we're done here then. Thanks for coming in, I appreciate that it was stressful given the history." After a moment's hesitation, Howard accepted the handshake.

**FBI WAR ROOM**

"I'm sorry, guys," said Nychev. "But we're looking at a genuine dead end here. The connection between him and Gonzalez is a bit weak, and I believe the guy. I think he's just grateful to have gotten a second chance at life with his family, I don't see him screwing that up with some revenge plot."

David reached for the remote and turned the screen with Howard's face on it off. "I'm afraid I have to agree."

All hands looked to Charlie, and after a moment he threw up his hands. "I agree. I'm not the interrogator or the criminal behavior expert, but – he seemed innocent. And I don't want to make assumptions about criminal social networks without the data to back them up, but the sophistication of this doesn't seem to match up with lower level criminals like him and his friend from prison."

Colby strangled a half-laugh, and David looked at him. "Sorry – I just had a mental image of Charlie here conducting an interrogation."

"Hey!" protested Charlie. "I've helped with interrogations before, I've been quite helpful."

Colby grinned. "Yeah. Helped being the operative word. Tell you what, we'll put you in the box with the next mobster we get, and see how it goes."

"Hey, you could be onto something there," said Liz. "We could sell tickets."

Charlie gave them all an affectionate glare. "I think I'll pass on being stuck in a small room alone with a mobster. But thank you for your resounding votes of confidence, I'm touched."


	7. Chapter 7

**SEGREGATION UNIT, US DOJ METROPOLITAIN DETENTION CENTER, ONE WEEK AFTER THE ARREST**

Don stopped pacing the small cell and lay down, staring up at the wall. After seven days, it was time to realize this might not be over quickly or easily, and that thought shot the same deep fear through him that he'd felt when he was arrested.

He glanced around the cell. It wasn't a horrible place to be, on the face of it. The bed was comfortable enough. A small television set bolted to the wall and a few books helped the time pass, and the detention officers were being meticulous with his protection, even kind in their simple interactions. Or was this just his own version of Stockholm Syndrome, a strange human ability to manufacture compassion where little exited?

No, this fear was of being forgotten behind a blank metal door in a warehouse for human beings, of losing his team and the job he loved, of seeing Robin walk away again. Of being written off as what he'd spent his life fighting. Charlie and Alan wouldn't abandon him, but how could he ask them to remain close, suffering his sentence by proxy?

He traced his finger along the wall in a lazy circular pattern. Was he really this afraid of a system he'd been a part of his whole adult life? Of doing a few years in minimum security lockup somewhere? Of the violence and hatred that might await him in prison? His hand left the wall and found the still-tender scar on his chest, tracing his fingers down the evidence of near death. It was slowly becoming less real, the nightmares less frequent, less intense.

That had been fear. Sudden pain, and then sickening shock. Being unable to breathe, gagging, choking on his own blood as his body starved of oxygen. And yet – there'd been that clinical side of him that knew what was happening, and that the suffering would be short. It was something you thought about and mentally prepared for, even accepted, from the day you took the job.

You were reminded in every shootout, every high-risk entry, every time a bad guy got the upper hand for even a second. In your first weeks at Quantico, they taught you officer-involved shooting statistics, how to survive being taken hostage, what happens to the human body when a bullet enters it. You see the names on the wall, and hear the stories.

You accept violent death as a possible outcome of doing a job you love, and when you get shot at there's a thrill along with the fear. You're prepared for this, you've trained for it, and there's something amazing about being able to fight through and survive.

They don't teach you how to cope when you're framed and taken off in handcuffs. How to deal with that kind of hurt, or the fear. When instead of a madman with a gun keeping you tied up in a basement, it's your own guys, the people you've spent your career trusting your life to, who've put you in a concrete box behind a steel door. The ones you can't fight, because you love them. No, this was quite possibly the one horror he'd never braced himself against.

His hand strayed to the wall again, exploring the thick white paint, the bumpy surface of the concrete underneath. How many people had occupied this cell before him? What had they been thinking and feeling as they lay here? Anger, hatred? Fear, like his own? How many were innocent? Did I put them here? Was I sensitive to that fear, did I give them a reassuring glance or a gentle touch, or did I shove and yell and slam doors?

Did I meet their eyes and resist my innate desire to offer comfort, driving home this fear with harsh words, because I knew failure to might cost an innocent person their life?

Something was familiar in the faint pattern of depressions in the concrete that his fingers were unconsciously tracing over and over, and he let his head roll to the side, looking at the wall. He smiled as it came to him, and closed his eyes, pressing his palm softly against the cool surface.

Random coincidence, mathematical probability, or was this God, reaching out with a soft reminder to trust those people he so feared losing?

**FBI WAR ROOM, 2200, ONE WEEK AFTER THE ARREST**

"Charlie – you do realize at some point you're going to have to start sleeping more than a couple hours a night," said David, gently prying a marker out of Charlie's hand.

Colby snickered. "Sure, because you've been giving yourself ever so much more."

David bit his lip in silent acknowledgement. "Well, Charlie, let's hear the latest. In English, because I don't understand anything you just wrote."

Charlie looked at the board, scratched his forehead, and groaned. "To be quite honest, I'm having some trouble making it out myself," he said.

"Okay. In the simplest possible terms, my program has been indexing data on every case Don and I have worked on in the past, as well as every current case, appeal, threats, and so forth. Then we look for correlations with people whose backgrounds, social networks, and psychological pathologies indicate some elements of means, motive, or opportunity to commit this crime."

"Which is a really long way of saying you're looking for high-end criminals who have it out for you or Don," said Colby.

"More or less," said Charlie. "The problem is, there aren't any. Not that my program has been able to identify. It's – well, terrifying to see the number of people who would like to see one or both of us die horribly, but I'm coming up dry on talented criminal networks run by people who'd like to see Don serve a few years for fraud."

"You're always telling us more data yields better results, right?" asked David. "Maybe we widen the search. Throw in family members of all of our potential suspects."

"How about victim's family members?" suggested Colby. "Grief can make people a little crazy, maybe someone blames Don for not being there in time, or not catching a killer."

"Charlie, what about professional rivals of yours?" asked Liz.

Charlie frowned. "I have them. But it's all about the work, if they want to take me down they discredit my papers, or rip me apart in a lecture. They don't waste time and effort on something like framing my brother." He turned away from the board, and then back again. "I'll include them."

Liz handed Charlie a file, and something personally troubled in her expression made Charlie pause, questioning her silently. "It's a list of facilities Don might be sent to if he's convicted. Security levels, threat analysis, and which groups of inmates might have access to him."

She managed, just barely, to keep her voice level. "There's a batch of files in there on a disk for you to add to your analysis."

Charlie reached out and touched her hand, which was still clutching a clipboard with white knuckles. "Have you been to see him?"

Liz shook her head. "Even when we were dating, I never really knew Don. But he cared about me, and that – I don't think I can handle seeing him in detention."

Charlie looked away.


	8. Chapter 8

_Note: Thank you so much for taking the time to write reviews, it means a lot to me and really helps keep me inspired to write. This won't be an epically long story; it follows the basic Numb3rs formula of setting up a crime and solving it. That being said, my stories always tend to drag on a little longer than I anticipate ;)_

**EPPES RESIDENCE, 0400, EIGHT DAYS AFTER THE ARREST**

It would have been an endearing sight if it didn't make Amita's heart ache. Charlie was slumped forward on a chair by the blackboard, his forehead resting against the board. His eyes were closed, but he wasn't asleep; the chalk was still clutched almost desperately in his hand.

Amita approached and rubbed Charlie's back in a tender greeting, and Charlie turned his head to look at her. "Charlie –" she took in his utterly lost expression and stopped. "Charlie, you will solve this." She rubbed the red line across his brow where his head had been pressed against the bottom of the board.

"I – don't know. I've never worked a case without Don – I go to the FBI and he's not there – I come home and it's so empty. His intuition is such a vital part of what we do, I can look at his face and see what he's reading about the human element. Without him, I feel like I'm spinning around in three dimensions without any frame of reference."

Amita wrapped her arm around his shoulders and half hugged, half pulled him to the couch. His unresisting form reflected just how dispirited he was, and after a minute Amita spoke again. "I was thinking about visiting Don today. How is he doing?"

"I don't know – I haven't been to see him since that first time."

Amita startled. "Wha – I would think you would be there every day. Why –"

"I just can't, okay? I can't handle it. Seeing him like that, feeling like – like a part of me is being killed and I can't do anything. I can't handle not being able to walk him out of there."

"Charlie…" she took his hands and rubbed them, while he sat, head down and eyes closed. "You're the most important thing he has in there. You realize how much seeing you must mean to him? The rest of us can get in once a week if we're lucky – how would it feel if you were in there and Don never came to see you, and reassure you?"

Charlie's expression didn't change, but a tear trickled from one tightly closed eye. "I'm not Don. I can't handle this stuff. I just can't – go through this again."

"Go through what again?" asked Amita, keeping her voice soft to blunt the impact of her words. "Seeing Don in prison? Charlie – is there a deeper fear at play here?"

"You mean my mother, don't you?" he asked, twisting the cuff of his jacket. She nodded. "I knew. For months, I knew and I couldn't stop what was happening to her. Don – Don and I weren't close then, but now…."

"That was a disease," she said, her voice so soft it was almost a whisper. "Nobody could stop it. This is a case, it's a problem, and I don't know anyone in the world better at beating this sort of thing than you and Don's team at the FBI. This story has a different ending, I promise."

Charlie pulled Amita into his arms and kissed her. "I'm so sorry – I've been absent from – us."

"Charlie – when I was kidnapped –"

Charlie brushed her hair back from her face. "Yes?" he asked, concerned.

"After – all the shooting started, I was on the floor, I hit my head, and I didn't know what was happening. I just kept wondering which shot was going to kill me. Then – I saw Don, and – that was probably the most intense relief I've ever felt. He was looking down at me, and the concern in his eyes was – it was like instant safety. He called me sweetheart. He was the first sane person I'd seen in two days – and I don't think I've ever felt more grateful for anything in my life."

Amita took a deep breath, collecting her emotions, and it took everything Charlie had not to interrupt, not to hug her and cut off the painful memories. "I loved him so intensely – for being there, and for looking at me with so much kindness, after - then he led me out and when I saw you – it was like everything else vanished. Don just faded into the background and left with the others, and I forgot he even existed."

She put her hands on Charlie's chest and looked deep into his eyes, troubled. "I wonder how many times he's done that for people, and never had them look back. What does it do to you, to work so hard, to go days without sleep and put your life on the line to save someone, and they just leave you in the dust?"

"I – don't think Don sees it that way," said Charlie. "Those moments are important to him too. He's so content when he comes home after he was able to save someone, it's what he lives for."

Amita relaxed in his arms, laying her head against his chest and listening to his heartbeat. "Have you ever talked to Don about this?" asked Charlie. "Told him how much that meant to you?"

She shook her head. "I – I think I was afraid it would be awkward, or he wouldn't understand the words the way I meant them. I just said thank you."

Charlie stroked her arm softly. "I think he probably understood."

**US DOJ METROPOLITAIN DETENTION CENTER, NINE DAYS AFTER THE ARREST**

"I wish you'd stop being so cheerful," Charlie admitted with a small smile. "I know you're just trying to make me feel better."

"Anything wrong with that?" asked Don, raising an eyebrow. "Hey, anything to keep you from going so long without stoppin' by again."

"It's not really working," said Charlie, trying not to stare at the orange jumpsuit his older brother looked so out of place in.

A genuinely affectionate smile spread across Don's face. "Hey. You know when they arrested you, and you were telling me how there was this little bunch of pits in the wall above the bed? Looked like the big dipper, said they reminded you of Larry?"

Charlie nodded.

"Guess what's above the bed where I've been living?"

Charlie emitted an incredulous half laugh, grinning despite himself. "You mean we've both been held in federal detention in the same cell?"

"Yep," said Don, returning the grin. "The Eppes brothers, criminal masterminds."

"Wow. That's –" Charlie stopped trying to talk and just smiled.

"Yeah." After a long, affectionate look passed between the two of them, Don spoke again. "It's gonna be okay, buddy. Don't drive yourself so hard, all right?"

"Since when have you not driven yourself when you were working on a case?" challenged Charlie.

"Yeah, well, lives aren't on the line here. Financial crimes cases move slower than violent crimes, that's just the way things are."

Charlie gave him a rebuking look. "Yours is. I've been working with you too long to be that naive, Don."

"Yeah?" asked Don softly. "Okay, then you know what could happen every time I walk out the door."

Charlie winced. "I guess – this scares me more, knowing you can't fight back."

Don watched him quietly, taking a long moment to make up his mind. "Back when I worked fugitive recovery – some things happened. Not bein' able to fight back doesn't mean giving up."

"Don-" Charlie stared, his eyes seeking out every line on his brother's face, every shade of expression in his eyes. The same person he'd known a minute ago looked back with calm, even gentle understanding. This Don was at once the brother he knew and the stranger he didn't.

"You take these risks too, you know," said Don, leaning forward and putting his elbows on the steel table. "Do you know how much that scares me, seeing you get tangled up with my world? You don't even have the training to defend yourself, now that's worry."

Charlie swallowed hard, momentarily scared and feeling very alone. Without Don at the helm, the world of the FBI forfeited its fascination for a sense of fear and forbidding. "It's hard, working on this without you. I mean – the guys are great -"

Don raised his eyebrows. "Hard on you? Do you know how nuts it's driving me not to be working this case? How many times I've gotten an idea and reached for my cell phone before I remember the bastards took it away from me?"

Charlie grinned, relieved at the sudden lightening of the mood. "Let me get this right. You're framed and locked up in solitary confinement without bail, and your most strongly worded complaint is that they took your cell phone away?"

Don's eyes twinkled in amusement. "How else am I gonna wake David up in the middle of the night to run down leads?" He leaned back in the chair. "Nah. I do miss work. A lot."

The look he gave Charlie was contemplative and unusually open. "But I dunno. Out there, all the lines I've crossed, people I've hurt – they're looking back at me, every day."

Charlie looked back at him for a long time. That was exploration, not self-pity or even quite guilt. Don's expression was open; his relaxed posture an invitation to discussion.

"Amita and I were talking last night. About when you rescued her, and how much love she felt for you in those moments when you were taking care of her. Do – do those people ever look back at you?"

"Yeah," Don admitted, tapping his fingers on the table while he contemplated. "They tend to have tears in their eyes."

"That has to be hard, to be the first person someone sees after they're kidnapped, or tortured…."

"It's easier than finding their body, I'll tell you that much." Don sighed. "Nah, bringing someone home alive, that's a good day. Nothing better than knowing you helped save a life. But that hurt – there's no undoing it."

Charlie nodded. "Amita's said there are things that scare her now. But she's more affected by learning how important she was to us. You sent in helicopters. That's what you do for people. They'll know for the rest of their lives that a stranger cared enough to track them down and fight for them."

Don contemplated Charlie's words for a minute. "Is that why you do this? FBI stuff? I mean – I know it's hard on you, it's bad for your career…"

"What, like it's not hard on you?" challenged Charlie, and Don give him a small smile of concession. "I'm not exactly sure why I like it yet, and to be quite honest – a close look at the psychological motivations behind my involvement tends to be uncomfortable. But have you seen the research on our inability to relate to genocide and other mass tragedies?"

"Actually – yeah, I think I read something like that. Like, we'll go all out to rescue a lost hiker, but we go numb and don't do anything when a million people starve to death?"

"Exactly. We cease to relate emotionally to tragedy when the numbers exceed our immediate comprehension. I love my academic work, and I appreciate on an academic level that I can help far more people in that capacity than I could by chasing down cases with you guys. But the emotional rewards are far higher on this micro level, where one can see and feel the impact on real lives."

Don smiled, a soft expression on his face. "You're hooked, buddy. All this job takes out of you, and you still come to work each day thinking you can't believe you get to do this for a living. You get hurt, see things that'll haunt you forever, and there is nothing you'd rather do than chase the rush of stopping a bad guy from hurting someone."

"And getting to work with someone you care about," said Charlie, unable to stop himself from glancing away in a sudden fit of shyness.

Don, too, glanced away before speaking. "It's been good. Really, really good."

"Hey," said Charlie. "No speaking in the past tense. We'll get you out of here."


	9. Chapter 9

**US DOJ METROPOLITAN DETENTION CENTER, TWO WEEKS AFTER THE ARREST**

"It's – not going so well," Charlie admitted, hating to say the words. "I'm so sorry."

"Hey," said Don, his voice soft. "Don't blame yourself, okay?"

Charlie gulped, studying his brother. He looked tired, calm, frighteningly resigned. His hair was neat and his face clean-shaven, but there was something blank in the way he looked at the table instead of meeting Charlie's eyes that was disturbing. "Are you okay?" he asked, desperate for any answer other than the one he was expecting.

"Yeah, I'm fine."

"Don – please look at me," he asked. "I know – this has to be awful, but please don't just vanish."

Don raised his head and focused his eyes on Charlie, who felt his heart steady. "I'm sorry, buddy. It's not awful, just – when you spend this much time with just yourself for company, maybe you need reminding how to play with others." He smiled, the familiar light flashing back into his eyes. "I'm okay. Really. Between you and Dad and the guys, I got plenty of people droppin' by to nag me out of any ideas I get about falling into a depression."

Charlie smiled back, willing himself not to give into the urge to cry. "I miss you." It wasn't what he'd planned to say – it was supposed to be something about the case – "I don't know why my program keeps coming up with no results. I've had Amita check me, other professors – something's wrong and it's driving me nuts not being able to find it."

"Hey – you're always telling me more data equals better results, right? Maybe you need to look at, say, family members of people I've sent away?"

Charlie nodded. "Actually – we just started adding that data." His cell phone rang, and he glanced at the caller ID. "It's David."

Don felt his heart race just briefly, the way it always did when some small thing happened to give him hope that maybe today would be the day this ended. He watched his brother's expression, and saw similar emotions there; hope, restrained by fear. "No," said Charlie. "I'm at the detention center, visiting Don."

"No, no. Yes, of course I want to come. I'll be right there." His younger brother pocketed the phone and stood. "They said they have something."

There was so much in those words; anticipation, excitement, apology for leaving. Don felt himself smile. "Enough to make my day. Get out of here."

"Okay." Charlie looked flustered, and rapped his hand on the table. "I'll be back."

"Of course you will. See ya' buddy."

Don barely paid attention to the detention officer who was handcuffing him and leading him to the elevator back up to the cells. It had become almost a normal routine now, and his mind was completely absorbed in savoring what he had just glimpsed: the crisp excitement of working a case, of teamwork and breakthroughs and setbacks, of phone calls and rapidly changing situations.

They stopped outside his cell, his hands were released, and for the first time, he couldn't force himself to enter with the acceptance he'd cultivated so firmly. It wasn't conscious; just an utter resistance to trade that thrill of involvement for all-encompassing nothingness. He wanted to jump in an SUV and speed down to the office, to chase down whatever lead this was, to apply his head to something other than watching daytime television and trying not to go insane.

"Hey! Am I gonna have to force you in there?" His escort was pissed. Don closed his eyes; it was the only way he could do this. He walked forward into the cell, only opening them when the door had been closed behind him with an annoyed slam.

**FBI WAR ROOM**

"I got here as fast as I could," said Charlie, bursting into the room and stopping to catch his breath. "What's up?"

"We caught a break," said David. "We've been running down the cases Don was involved with prior to his arrest."

"We figured they were all legit cases, and we follow them, maybe they lead us to whoever set up Don," Colby interjected.

"Right," said David. "Well, we'd been sniffing around this money-laundering network that works for several different organized crime organizations, and guess what we turned up."

He flashed a picture up on the screen, of a run-down storefront with a lopsided sign reading _Starscape Recording Studio_, then another of a tattooed young man with long black hair and a single earring in the shape of a guitar pick.

"That's Sam Lobell, the son of Traxler Lobell. Nineteen years old. He runs a recording and sound-mixing studio, which happens to be one of many fronts for the laundering network. Aside from being an accessory to his father's criminal activities and some minor drug use, it looks like he's kept his nose fairly clean. Running the studio lets him indulge in what seems to be a genuine passion for music," David explained.

"It gets better," said Colby. "Apparently the man's a mixing genius, even managed to do some genuine sound work for some of the big studios every so often. Seems to be making a bit of a name for himself."

"Nikki and Liz are picking the kid up now," said David, glancing at his watch. "Nychev's been working the money-laundering angle, and it seems these guys specialize in online transactions. He thinks they could easily be capable of the rest of the fame-up. He's letting us run the kid's interrogation."

All heads in the room turned when shouting and cries of protest burst out briefly in the bullpen, followed by a slamming door to one of the interview rooms. A few minutes later Nikki strode into the war room, her hair disheveled and a faint sheen of sweat dampening her face. "God, what a neurotic wimp. Next time, you guys get to pick up the sensitive artiste. Guy can't stand being handcuffed, howled and cried the whole way here begging us to let him go."

Charlie winced. "Sounds unpleasant for everyone involved."

Nikki sat heavily. "Stuck him in an interview room and cut him loose. Thought it might let him unwind a bit, but he's just sitting there looking like a beaten puppy."

The agents all exchanged glances, and finally David sighed. "I'll go in."

**FBI INTERVIEW ROOM**

"I swear to you, I didn't set up any FBI agent!" protested Lobell. "Look, anything illegal that happens in that studio, I'm just following orders from my dad. Money stuff, you know? Maybe some guy with no talent pays a whole lot to get an album recorded, stuff like that. I'm just the tech guy, I'm in it for the music, okay?"

"You're saying you had nothing to do with that recording I just played you?"

"That's exactly what I'm saying! Look, my gear couldn't even do what you say it did, and I've never even heard of Agent Eppes."

"No?" asked David, his voice soft. He picked up an evidence bag and showed it to him. "Agents searching your studio found this in the trash." It was a crumpled page from a legal pad, bearing a hasty scrawl that read _Final edit Eppes project_.

The catch in Lobell's breath couldn't be missed, but he covered it with a quick shrug of the shoulders. "Maybe something one of the guys was working on. Not my handwriting."

David studied him. His voice was still gentle when he spoke again. "Records show this is your first arrest. You were pretty terrified, probably still are. I want you to think about that for a minute, how that felt."

Lobell stared at the door, his face hard. David continued. "Agent Eppes is a friend of mine. He was arrested, handcuffed, and he's spent more than two weeks in solitary confinement, knowing he's been framed for something he didn't do. Can you even imagine that?"

Lobell looked away, and David pressed on. "You cooperate with us, you'll end up on probation. You'll save an innocent man from prison, not to mention yourself."

There was nothing but sullen silence from Lobell, and David matched it, watching him for a good five minutes without speaking. The teenager shifted uneasily in his seat several times, but seemed to grow no more inclined to look at or speak to David. He wrapped his arms around his chest and rocked back and forth in sullen boredom, staring at a scratch on the table.

David leaned back in his chair and sighed. "We've got enough evidence to hold you as an accessory to your dad's money-laundering operation, so you're headed for the federal detention center." He stood. "When you feel like getting out, let your lawyer know you're ready to talk about that tape."


	10. Chapter 10

US DOJ METROPOLITAIN DETENTION CENTER, EIGHTEEN DAYS AFTER THE ARREST

Don groaned and tried putting the pillow over his head in addition to his arm. It didn't help. The occupant of the cell next door slammed something – a foot, his whole body, a truck….Don didn't really care – against the wall with a heavy thud and resumed his incessant screaming.

It was keeping Don's gut in a permanent knot after so many hours; he knew the man wasn't being hurt, not physically at any rate. He was half inclined to want to beat the guy half to death to shut him up, but nothing could change the fact that it was impossible to listen to a man screaming and crying without it having an impact.

There were footsteps in the hall outside, and they stopped outside the neighboring cell. Don wondered what tactic the hapless detention officers would try this time. Everything from gentle coaxing to exasperated, shouted threats had failed. There was another thud, and more screaming. He could hear the officer trying to talk to the other prisoner, muffled words finally tapering off in defeat.

The footsteps came to rest outside his door, and Don stood, peering out the small window. "You hangin' in there?" asked Kevin Anderson, the lead detention officer in Don's unit.

"Barely," admitted Don.

"Sorry about that." Anderson winced. "We're trying to get him a transfer to mental health services, but it's looking like a long night waiting for red tape. Poor guy's completely lost it."

"Yeah, well, I'm about to," said Don. He gave the officer an understanding look. "Hard to listen to."

"Yeah." Anderson gave the window a friendly tap with his knuckles. "You're up for the rec room in about an hour, see you in a bit."

Don nodded with a brief smile, and sat down again, ordering his gut for about the fiftieth time to ignore the frantic cries and thuds on the other side of the wall. He flinched, on edge, when the wall at his back registered a furious kick from his other neighbor. "Shut the fuck up!" bellowed a voice loud enough to be mistaken for a bullhorn. "I'll give you a fuckin' reason to scream, you fuckin' retard!"

Don stood and slammed his own foot into the wall. "Knock it off, 'less you want me to start howling too," he shouted. His voice reverberated around the cell with startling clarity, shocking him back into composure. He laid down on the bunk, and forced himself to focus on breathing, not the throbbing in his head or his own intense desire to scream.

There was a sharp rap on the cell door, and Don jumped to his feet. Recognizing Anderson through the small window, he gave the officer a friendly nod of greeting.

Seconds later, Anderson slammed the palm of his hand against the polycarbonate pane with furious violence. The metal door shook, and Don's heart rate spiked as he startled back despite himself.

"Eppes, if this is some dumbass attempt on the part of your guys to force a confession, I swear to God you will see the consequences."

"What?" asked Don, keeping his distance from the door and the furious detention officer outside.

"I just got the detailed case files on the kid next door. He's a suspect in your goddamn case! You people will not use my facility to torture suspects, you got it, you fucking asshole?"

Don met Anderson's eyes. He knew that look of rage; he'd worn it enough times himself. "Let's pretend I don't know a thing about this," he said, maintaining a calm gaze. "Last I heard, I was the suspect in my case."

"Says here in the report that agents have reason to believe your neighbor over there made the tape that constitutes the most damning evidence against you. The kid wouldn't talk, and Special Agent Sinclair has him booked. Your boys are fishing for a deal. But I don't give a damn how much they want to save you, this isn't gonna fly."

Anderson's voice went utterly cold. "They're doing this for you, well I'm gonna make your life a living hell until your buddy backs off."

"Okay," said Don, his voice quiet.

"What?"

"Okay," repeated Don, waiting a moment before speaking again. "You do what you gotta do."

Anderson frowned. The calm acceptance in Don's unblinking reaction was the last thing he'd expected.

"Or, you could just call Sinclair and tell him what's going on before you assume the worst," said Don. "Last I checked, he didn't run cases by inflicting psychological torture on mentally disturbed suspects."

"Word of advice? Don't assume someone that supervises a maximum security jail was born yesterday," said Anderson. "Yeah, a detention officer calls up an FBI agent and says, 'Hey, your prisoner isn't happy here in jail, could you let him go please?' and the FBI agent says, 'Sure, why not.'"

"I could give you the same advice about FBI agents," retorted Don. "We like it when fellow agents are threatened, it makes us all cuddly and cooperative."

The officer's face softened, threatening to smile. "Okay. How'd you feel about my having a talk with your agent and asking him to back off this kid? Would it actually work?"

"How'd you feel about my trying to talk to the guy?" Don jerked his head to the side, indicating the neighboring cell.

"Are you nuts?"

"Will be if I have to listen to him screaming much longer. Hey, I'm a prisoner and I'm an FBI agent. You have to admit I'm kinda uniquely qualified."

Anderson studied him silently, actually considering it. "This wouldn't be you seeing a chance to work this case yourself?"

"Of course it is," said Don. "Not by making things harder on the kid, though."

"Let me run it past some of the guys."

Ten minutes later, Anderson came to a stop outside the door. "Okay. We're going to try this. Both ends of this section are locked down, and I'm going to stand at that door, just inside. If anything at all happens, you hit the floor and lace your fingers behind your back. You do that, I give you my word the first move I make will be to cover you, okay?"

Don nodded, and Anderson opened the cell door. "What do we know about his history?" asked Don. "Arrests, mental health issues…"

"He's pretty clean," said Anderson. "This is his first arrest, so if this is the result of abuse, which I suspect it is, it didn't happen in a jail. I'm not seeing any psychiatric history either, but all that means is he hasn't been institutionalized. He could easily be under the care of a private doctor."

"He violent?" asked Don.

"He hasn't attacked anyone, doesn't seem violent but in his state we can't take anything for granted," said Anderson. "Problem here is, he's severely claustrophobic, and restraints send him into a panic."

Don frowned. "What? So you stick him in solitary?" The thought was revolting; he wasn't the least bit claustrophobic and even he had to fight a primal sense of unease induced by the feeling of being walled up in such an enclosed space.

"He started out in general holding, but he was too disruptive. Made his way through the rest of the facility and wound up here because nobody could deal with him. Doc gave him a sedative and it just wound him up even more."

"What's his name?"

"Sam Lobell. He's nineteen years old." The two men exchanged glances, and Don approached the cell.

Don peered through the window, and only his years of familiarity with crime scenes kept his expression steady. He spoke to the man inside in a soft voice, not paying heed to the words, just their tone. "Easy, Sam. I'm not here to hurt you, okay? I just want to talk."

There was blood smeared on the window, on the walls, on the blanket twisted on the floor. There was no mattress on the steel platform which served as a bed, just footprints of water tinted bright red with blood. The water was everywhere; soaking one side of the prisoner's jumpsuit, covering the floor, splashed on the walls.

Lobell jumped on top of the metal bed with a scream, flattening himself against the wall and staring at the corner of the cell. It was easy enough to see the source of the blood; his hands and feet were covered with the results of hours of slamming into concrete and metal.

Don knew there was no way someone in the grip of such abject trauma would comprehend the words coming out of his mouth, but their tone, their intent…that might be heard. "I'm not going to hurt you, I want to help, okay? You're gonna be all right, son. You're gonna be all right. I'll be back in just a minute." He touched the window with his hand. "I'll be right here, okay? We're right outside the door."

He approached Anderson, stopping at a respectful distance. "Call Agent Sinclair, tell him I said to get this kid out of jail now. Tell him to move him into a good mental facility that specializes in abuse and PTSD, not a hospital psych unit. He'll listen."

Anderson studied him with a piercing stare. "How do I know he won't wind up worse off if I let your guys control this?"

Don rolled his eyes. "You've had me under a microscope for weeks, does anything about me say sadistic asshole? Look, I know you're a humane guy, but how many people would look at the disaster in there and be able to think for a second this was something other than abject cruelty? It's appalling."

A faint hint of a smile appeared in Anderson's eyes. "Probably only the guy stuck in the cell next to him all day."

"Agent Sinclair wouldn't knowingly do this to someone. He's ethical, has a soft heart. One reason I recommended him for the job."

Anderson finally nodded. "Get back in the cell. I'll make the call." Don obeyed, turning around when the door clicked shut softly behind him. The detention officer met his eyes through the opening, and though he didn't smile, there was genuine warmth in his expression.

Don lay down on his side, controlling his breathing and trying to shake the deep-rooted feeling of nausea in his gut. A repetitive screaming issued forth from the neighboring cell, and he flinched, closing his eyes and gritting his teeth. His hand found the friendly constellation on the wall, and he pressed his palm hard against the cold cement.

"Please end this." He was whispering out loud, unconsciously trying to cover the horror next door with something more soothing, even if it was his own voice. "Please, please end this." Don felt something wet and warm escape his closed eyes, and he didn't fight it. Perhaps it was part of prayer, part of the grief inherent in having to turn to something unknown for help when every fiber of his being was screaming for the chance to do it for himself.

_"Well, let's face it. Don Eppes and trust issues are pretty much synonymous."_

Wasn't like he hadn't heard the sentiment a few dozen times, but Liz had put it more succinctly than most.

_"I know how to trust! Every time I go in the field, I put my life in the hands of the people I work with. That's faith in my book."_

_"Not coming from a man who's more afraid of being wrong than of getting shot."_

What the hell was trust, anyway? And faith? Putting the outcome of a situation in the hands of another person, of random chance, of God? Wasn't that a recipe for the worst kind of disappointment? Self-sponsored helplessness under the guise of trusting someone or something else to control your destiny? A coping mechanism that, however tempting, would simply lead to even deeper hurt?

You're hurt anyway, Donny. You're lying here in a cell crying because you've lost everything you love, because you're accused of being a criminal, because some kid society should have protected is in agony you can't stop, because no matter how much you want to, you can't get yourself out of this. Because your only hope lies completely out of your hands, and that's just unbearable, isn't it? Is that why people trust? Because it hurts less than this?

_"You know – I remember when I was younger, I was looking at this picture of a pile of bodies of people who were murdered in the holocaust. You read so many stories of faith, and I just wonder where that fits in for those people."_

_The rabbi looked at him, thoughtful. "Faith isn't a way of securing a promise that everything will turn out the way you want it to. It's a matter of being at peace with God, and with yourself and your place in the world."_

"_Now that's not easy."_

_The rabbi smiled. "I don't think anyone ever claimed it was."_

Peace? How can I be at peace with this?

There was a thud from next door, the sound of a body falling. It was followed by a howl of pain, and sobbing.

Because you know yourself? Because you know you're doing everything in your limited power to help that kid, and you know you're innocent of these charges? Because you know that officer out there is a good human being, and he's doing exactly the same thing?

Because you know David, and Charlie, Colby, Dad, Liz, Robin, Nikki, Amita, even Vic Nychev, and you know they are smart and capable and they care deeply?

Because the smartest thing is to have faith, and trust? To be at peace instead of lying here in misery?

He pressed his hand even harder against the wall. "I'll try," he whispered.


	11. Chapter 11

**Chapter 11 **

**BULL PEN, FBI OFFICE**

Nikki walked up to David's desk with a file in her hand. "Background on our kid. Turns out doctors and teachers reported several times that they suspected physical and sexual abuse, but none of them ever came to anything. When he was fifteen, the mother showed up at a police station asking for protection, and claiming the father was raping them both, Sam denied it, and the case was dropped when the mother never returned officers' calls. Guess why?"

"Dead," said David, reaching for the file.

"Missing. The body's never been found, and nobody ever filed a report, but it's got revenge murder written all over it."

"You know, I got the feeling he wanted to confess in there, this might explain why he didn't," said David, thoughtful. "His mother talked to the cops, and ended up dead."

David flipped through the pages, his face growing increasingly grim. "God. The mother claimed Traxler Lobell would lock Sam in a closet, and force him to have intercourse in exchange for getting to get out and go to school. I sent this guy to jail, no wonder he snapped." He set the file down and closed his eyes.

"You didn't know," said Nikki. "You didn't do anything wrong."

"I ignored the signs," said David. "His fear of being restrained, refusing to make eye contact, shutting down when I pressed him – classic PTSD, classic signs of abuse. I just wanted to see something else."

"That's half the mental cases in this city," said Nikki. "I'm still going with not your fault, even though self-blame seems to be all the rage in this office."

David stood. "It's more than that. If this guy set Don up, I'm guessing the ultimate goal is a lot more disturbing than just getting him off the case."

**SEGREGATION UNIT, US DOJ METROPOLITAIN DETENTION CE****NTER**

There was a soft knock, and Anderson unlocked the door to Don's cell and opened it. "Place is secured for the night. You want to see if you can settle the kid down?"

Don examined the officer with curious gratitude. "Of – course." The last thing he'd expected was another chance to speak to Lobell.

Anderson eyed him back. "I'm counting on you to play fair."

"Of course," said Don. "You reach Sinclair?"

"Yes," said Anderson. "Just got a call, Lobell's being picked up in a couple hours, so…." He beckoned Don out of the cell.

"Hey, Sam. Remember me?"

Anderson retreated quietly to his post at the end of the hall, and Don kept speaking. "I'm sorry I had to leave you earlier, I needed to see about trying to get you out of here. You hang in there, okay? They're gonna let you out, I promise. You're going to be fine, it'll be over soon."

The ungodly mess in the cell was considerably worsened by the recent addition on a dinner tray and its former contents, liberally splattered on the walls and floor. "I see you weren't a fan of dinner. I wasn't either, to tell you the truth. Soup wasn't bad, but those noodles –" he shuddered. "Those had to be the creation of a mad scientist."

"I'm sorry," said Lobell, not looking at Don. "I'm so sorry." He stood and flung himself at the rear wall of the cell, smashing his forehead against the concrete in what appeared to be an attempt to knock himself out when he couldn't escape.

"Easy," said Don. "Easy. It's okay. It's okay, all right? I'm not mad, I'm not going to hurt you." He studied Lobell carefully, trying to decide how much to read into the apology and frantic retreat.

"I'm Don Eppes," he said, leaving off the 'Special Agent' part of his name and placing a hand on the window. He'd learned that from Anderson; in absence of what normally passed for human contact, it was a surprisingly readable and reassuring gesture when done with gentleness. "You recognize my voice, don't you?"

Lobell paced with the frantic energy of an animal trying to escape a trap, and Don decided to back away from the questioning. "It's okay, Sam. If you made that recording, it's okay. I'm not angry, all right? I won't hurt you."

There was no acknowledgement from the prisoner, but he stopped pacing and scrunched himself in a ball in the far corner of the cell, wrapping his arms around his knees and staring at the floor. Don had to figure that was progress of sorts. "Do you mind if I keep you company out here for a bit? I won't hurt you, you don't have to talk to me, okay? I'd just like to be here. Is that all right, Sam?"

There was a whimper from within, and Don thought he saw Lobell shrink away. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable. I won't use that name again, okay? You must do music stuff, right? Recording, mixing…that's gotta be some kind of magic. Creating a world of sound, out of nothing? Something like that, you can vanish in it."

He smiled. "I think I know that tattoo. On your neck. It's Cash, isn't it? The needle? The needle tears a hole?" Nobell's breathing stopped, and for one split second he jerked his head around towards the cell door as though to look at Don.

"You don't write a song like that without knowing pain," said Don, his voice soft. "I hurt myself today, I let you down, I will make you hurt?"

Lobell clenched his eyes shut and lowered his head, his breath coming in sobs. "You look in the mirror and see that every day," Don mused. "A needle full of drugs, tearing into your carotid artery? A shattered guitar? I gotta think that's something other than just morbid. I gotta think that's a memorial to some pretty deep pain."

"Cash, that'd be a nice name. Can I call you Cash?" asked Don.

A minute later, there was a faint nod.

"Thanks, Cash. You can call me Don, okay? I want you to know you're safe, and they're going to let you out of here soon. You're going to a place where you'll be safe and you can talk to a therapist. You ever been in therapy?"

No response. "I have. Few times, actually. Things happen that make you feel pretty alone, 'cause there's just no way you can explain how they affected you. No way you can put some things into words, but they get that. Makes you feel not so alone, like maybe someone can comprehend. Like you're not the only guy who gets it."

"Not real. Not real." Lobell bunched his right hand into a fist and scraped his raw knuckles on the wall, leaving behind a deliberate pattern of bloody stripes.

Don felt his stomach clench in empathy at how that must feel and tried not to grimace. It was probably the same drive that made people cut themselves, an attempt to feel physical pain as a distraction from the emotional kind, but it was hard to watch. "Easy, kiddo. I know it hurts, but you gotta get it under control, okay?"

"Not real. You're not real!" Lobell screamed. "It's all fake, you're fake, you're not real!" He punched his fist into the wall repeatedly, smearing the lines into a mess.

"I'm a real person, Cash. I'm not a hallucination, okay, I'm right here talking to you." Sam started sobbing, and crawled under the metal bed platform, curling up into a ball with his back against the wall.

"That's better, Cash. Found a little bit of a hiding spot, huh? Hey, I want you to know something, okay? That recording you made. I'm not mad, I know it wasn't your idea. But because of it, I'm going to be locked up in here for a really long time. I'm not going to ask you to talk about it right now, but later, when you're safe - remember you can say you did it and nobody's going to be angry with you. I'd be really grateful if you can ever do that for me, okay?"

The kid was holding his eyes tightly closed. "Not real. Not real, this isn't happening-"

Don cut him off. "Yes, son, this is real. That's an easy lie to tell yourself, but it won't help you get through this. This is real, this is happening, and I'm a real person, counting on you to do the merciful thing. Okay?"

Sam didn't respond, but he was lying quietly in one spot. No screaming, no knuckle-painting – that was some progress, at least. Now let it go. He heard you, let it go. Pushing this isn't gonna help.

Don drew in a deep breath, releasing tension from the most personally important interrogation he'd ever conducted. This was way different from the other scary kind, the kind where if you miss-stepped someone else might die.

This – this was bewilderingly personal. But it was always personal, putting himself in the shoes of both victim and suspect and bringing every scrap of training and instinct he had to the table. Maybe it came down to control, the one advantage he usually had and was now lacking.

What was it you were telling yourself about faith? You're standing here, right? You got a shot at this against all odds, that's not good enough for you, you have to run a perfect interrogation of the mentally and emotionally unstable teenager who helped frame you?

He leaned his shoulder on the door, settling in. Now it was time to be a human being instead of an FBI agent, to offer what comfort he could.

To both of them.

**BULL PEN, FBI OFFICE**

"Sinclair?"

David looked up from his desk and greeted Nychev.

"Bad news, I'm afraid. Handwriting Analysis just got back to us on that note. The kid was telling the truth, that wasn't his handwriting."

David sighed. "Doesn't mean much," he said, trying to hide his disappointment. "We know he was working for someone else."

Nychev saw through it. "I'm sorry. Techs are still at the studio going over the sound equipment there."

David looked at the other agent. "He recognized that note. It's the one thing about that interview I'm sure of."

"I agree," said Nychev. He sat on the edge of the desk. "Look – margin of human error, right? You're sitting here asking yourself how you missed Lobell's history, I'm asking myself seriously for the first time if I put an innocent colleague in jail."

Nychev looked troubled, and after a minute he asked, "Have you ever questioned his innocence?"

"No. It wouldn't shock me if one day, Don did something hotheaded and stupid and probably just a little noble that landed him in jail. But internet fraud? Anything with a selfish motive?" He shook his head. "It's just inconceivable to me."

"In-con-ceivable!" agreed Colby. "You know, in the movie that line didn't work out so good. Maybe you should pick a new one."

"Whatever, Westley," retorted David, smiling at his partner's not-so-subtle attempt to break in and lighten the prevailing gloom.

"Okay, if I'm Westley, I just have one question for you. Where's my princess?"

**SEGREGATION UNIT, US DOJ METROPOLITAIN DETENTION CENTER**

Anderson conferred with someone on the radio, and then approached Don. "Transport team's here to transfer Lobell. Need you to go back in now."

Don nodded, and touched the window briefly. "Bye, Sam. Thanks for letting me keep you company, you're gonna be fine." He turned and walked back into the cell, and Anderson paused before closing the door.

"Good job, Agent Eppes."

Don's breath caught in his throat. Anderson had never called him that before. Nobody in here had. In here, he was a prisoner, a last name, a cell number – anything but an FBI agent. He met Anderson's eyes with intense gratitude.

"I'm sorry I leapt to conclusions earlier. This job doesn't exactly inspire confidence in human nature." He hesitated. "You didn't deserve that."

"No worries," said Don with a faint smile. "Good night."


	12. Chapter 12

**SEGREGATION UNIT, US DOJ METROPOLITAIN DETENTION CENTER**

Don awoke slowly, relaxed and savoring a comfortably warm and sleepy state for a while longer. It was the soundest night's sleep he'd gotten since his arrest, blissfully free of tension and of the hyper-awareness of every sound outside his cell. Free of the sick sensation of being wrongfully accused.

Peaceful. Yeah, that was it. His eyes drifted open. Nothing had changed; he was still locked in the same cell, and it looked exactly as it had during the previous eighteen days.

No, everything had changed.

It was slow and imperfect and occasionally horrific, but the system, his system, was working. He hadn't realized until this very moment how important that was to him, how shattering it was to feel betrayed by it.

There were leads on his case; David and Charlie and all the others were doing what they did best, and it was working. A suspect had gone through a hell nobody intended, but the right people had cared enough to fix it. That there was enough to make Don relax and close his eyes again.

Faith, huh? Okay, I give.

There were footsteps approaching, and Don listened intently. They stopped outside the door to his cell. Don's muscles tightened, and he stopped breathing as he sat up and ditched the blanket. He didn't fear the detention officers, but despite the high security there was always a dogged survival instinct running "what-if" scenarios in the back of his mind. If it should ever be a prisoner with a handmade gun or some other assault outside the door, he wasn't about to be caught napping.

"From your lawyer," said an officer in a bored voice. He stuffed a manila envelope through the access hatch in the door. It fell to the floor and he walked on.

Don picked up the envelope and removed the contents.

So much for breathing. He sat heavily on the bunk, the disconnected part of his brain marveling at how much this felt like going into shock from an injury. His head was spinning, tiny spots obscuring his vision. His heart was racing, and he felt cold. And sick.

This doesn't change anything, Eppes. It was coming. You knew it was coming, get it together. He braved another look at the official documents that so simply and plainly shoved a dagger right into his heart.

He'd seen so many of these. It was a simple notice of a criminal jury trial date, in this case nearly two months in the future. He'd never seen one with his name in simple black capital letters as the defendant.

Breathe, Eppes. Get over it. Move on, adapt, deal. You know the drill. Fear does nothing, grief does nothing, you deal with what's in front of you and right now, this is it. Breathe.

His breath was coming in deep, gasping breaths, but finally his heart began to slow, and through sheer force of will his vision cleared. He still felt sick, but he forced himself to stand, propping up the papers on the narrow metal shelf above the bed. He left the damning black text visible. It would stay there until it lost its power over him.

He prowled back and forth, staring at it. Ran the water in the sink and splashed it on his face, drank several large gulps from his cupped hands. Another look at the damn papers.

It was a hell of a time to be locked in a cell, when he wanted to run, kick the living daylights out of a punching bag, or at the very least drive too fast to the shooting range. Shock was finally giving way to adrenaline and anger, and he dropped to the floor and started doing pushups.

He didn't stop until his muscles gave out and he collapsed on the floor, gasping for air. His lungs were burning in protest, and he remembered his own words to Lobell about using physical pain to distract from emotional pain.

You're not painting in your own blood, Eppes, it's a damn workout. Big difference, okay?

Yeah, sure, this is healthy.

He opted to quit snarking at himself and launched into another round of pushups. When it became not a conscious decision to stop but a state of sheer physical collapse, he left himself splayed on the cool concrete floor. He was soaked with sweat and his entire upper body was quivering in fatigue, so he took another look up at the document.

His heart rate didn't change. It was impossible. His breathing, too, was out of the control of his freaked-out mind, and that meant he won. He closed his eyes and rested his head on the floor, struggling for breath, his mission accomplished.

**WAR ROOM, FBI OFFICE, NINETEEN DAYS AFTER THE ARREST**

"How'd it go at the crisis center?" asked David. "Any chance of a confession any time soon?"

Colby shook his head. "You had to send him to a private facility, didn't you?" David's frown prompted him to elaborate. "Nothing like being treated like the incarnation of evil. They blame everyone with a badge for putting him in jail as well as for not preventing his father from abusing him. I'm sure they'd like to pin global warming on me too."

"They know he did this to himself – right?" asked Charlie, his frown matching David's.

Colby sighed. "Yeah, though to be fair, Lobell does look like someone worked him over with a two-by-four. I'm thinking they're just not fans of law enforcement. Anyway, he's pretty much incoherent, and they think it'll be a week or two before he's in any state to talk to us."

David gave a frustrated groan. "Okay. Handwriting Analysis says the note wasn't written by our kid, let's get them working on who did write it."

"It wasn't Traxler Lobell," said Liz. "Nychev already checked, and he's having the lab search for a match right now."

**US DOJ METROPOLITAIN DETENTION CENTER**

"What's the matter, Don?"

He drummed his fingers on the table, finally meeting Charlie's gaze. "I got a trial date. Couple months from now."

"You –" Charlie's heart sank, and he closed his eyes. "God, it's really happening, isn't it? All this?"

"I wish it weren't," admitted Don. "But – here's the thing. I don't want you to feel like there's a deadline, and after that they line me up against a wall and shoot me. Even if this thing goes forward, a conviction can be overturned, okay?"

Charlie nodded, braving a look at Don out of the corner of his eyes. "If it goes forward – you will be convicted?"

"My lawyer says so. The AUSA wants to plea bargain for information. One of those situations where it really messes you up to be innocent," he said, well aware of the irony.

"Don…" Charlie's voice trailed off as words failed him. Five years ago, he wouldn't have recognized the stoic, only slightly off-kilter expression as what happened when Don Eppes got hit with the emotional equivalent of an armored truck. His brother's phrasing of the trial as an execution was anything but accident.

He took a deep breath. "Hey – even if twelve of your peers don't know you well enough to ignore the evidence, there is no way any of us are going to stop believing in you. We'll find the answer."

There was gratitude in Don's return gaze. "I know."

"We – we have leads now -" said Charlie finally, trying not to reach the emotional point of no return. It was finally starting to rub off on him, that graceful way the FBI agents stepped in to take the emotional lead when a colleague was pushed to the breaking point. The way they almost always managed to keep one cool head in the room.

Don's forehead creased in a thoughtful frown. "I dunno. The idea of Traxler Lobell setting me up – it just doesn't set right."

"Why not?" asked Charlie.

"It's – it's like career suicide for the guy. There's a reason mobsters and gangs generally avoid putting hits out on law enforcement, and this isn't much different." Don shook his head. "You take it out of the league of criminal against criminal and target a federal agent, that's not going to get your case dropped. That's more like deliberately putting yourself under a really pissed-off microscope."

Charlie nodded slowly, thinking it over. "Sam – do you think he made the recording?"

Don nodded. "Pretty sure he did. Or knew about it, at least. Maybe it wasn't Traxler that hired him. Could be someone with a more personal motive."

**WAR ROOM, FBI OFFICE, TWENTY DAYS AFTER THE ARREST**

Vic Nychev walked in and greeted them, flopping a file down on the desk. "It's your favorite bearer of bad news. These are the lab reports from the technicians who've been going over the audio equipment at Starscape Studio. They say there's no way it produced our recording."

David's head drooped. "That really wasn't what I was hoping to hear."

Charlie twisted his tie, unable to look at either of them. The patterns intertwined, stripes on one side and spots on the other creating an entirely different fabric.

"Don doesn't think it was Traxler Lobell who set him up." Charlie wasn't prepared for how faint his voice was.

"Did he have a better idea?" asked David.

"No," Charlie admitted.

"Then we'll keep chasing this, and see where it goes," said David. "I still want to know who wrote that note. And I want to see Traxler Lobell investigated for what he did to his family, even if he had nothing to do with Don."

"That was Don's point," said Charlie. "Lobell messes with an FBI agent, he comes under scrutiny he never would have been under before. You never would have even known about the missing mother if you hadn't pulled background on Sam."

"Yeah – well, nobody said criminals were smart," said Nychev.

"Don is," said Colby.

"I'm not sure I like how that came out," said Liz. Colby rolled his eyes and looked halfway tempted to stick his tongue out at her.


	13. Chapter 13

**Chapter 13**

_I apologize for the short chapter. If it's as complex to read as it was to write, you may end up thanking me for not making it longer ;)_

_Someone commented that the chapter with Lobell had to have been hard to write, and it certainly was, both emotionally and logistically. This one was harder – heck, it's probably the most complex single chapter I've ever tried to put together. I hope it's not too horribly confusing._

**SEGREGATION UNIT, US DOJ METROPOLITAIN DETENTION CENTER**

Don set the book he wasn't reading down with a sigh. He rolled onto his side and closed his eyes, fingering the trial notice he was using as a bookmark.

His talk with Lobell kept replaying in his mind, and every time he examined it for something he'd missed. This time the journey took him back to Quantico, to a classroom where a veteran agent was speaking on decision making.

"_You're gonna hear about a hundred people lecture you about trusting your instincts. Well, I'm here to tell you your instincts can and will be wrong many times in your career. Good agents make horrible decisions, because it turns into an ego thing. You're working a case, and all of a sudden following your gut turns into a euphemism for 'I can't be wrong because I'm so damn special.'"_

_The agent surveyed the room, his eyes seeking out each and every student with a stern sort of ferocity. "I never want to hear one of my students coerced a false confession out of a suspect or planted evidence because their instincts told them they had the right guy. You hear me? Because you will be wrong, and if you're any kind of decent human being it will haunt you for the rest of your life. That high of being right? It goes away real fast when you're wrong."_

There was something with Lobell. What was it? How did you pin down the behavior that seemed "off" when considering someone who was painting in their own blood and hallucinating? How do you track down what's bugging you when you're deathly afraid your own conclusion will leave you still sitting in a cell?

"_Can't you see that an objective evaluation comes to an entirely different conclusion? He's innocent."_

"_Well – Charlie, I promise you, he will get his day in court."_

It had been so simple in his mind when he gave his overly concerned younger brother a dismissive pat on the arm.

Sure, the guy spent a few weeks in custody. Hardly the end of the world, and if he was really innocent, the court would clear it up. Wasn't like they were going to ship Charlie's crop-professor buddy to GITMO or anything.

No, it hadn't been that simple. Not really.

That had been the hardass FBI agent who wanted everything his agency did to be right, stomping without remorse on his sympathetic, human conscience.

Was this simply a harsh lesson in faith and compassion? Or was that just how he wanted to see it, because such a thing implied some sort of cosmic justice when reality was that his system of justice was failing him on a very personal level?

The instructor's words had achieved the result he was aiming for: an uncomfortable silence and the rapt attention of every student in the room.

_"Your gut instinct's most valuable function is to alert you to what your subconscious mind knows before your conscious mind can figure it out. It's not a magical phenomenon that you get because you're just that damn good. It's a function of the human brain, and if you learn to listen when it says something's off, it may just keep you from pulling the trigger on a civilian. It may lead you to an unlikely break in a case. Instinct isn't some magical voodoo, it's your own brain saying, 'Hey, dummy! Over here!'"_

Hallucinating.

Sure, that's a part of PTSD. But they're short, something that hits you for a few seconds. It's more like reliving and reinventing, experiencing your deepest fears. It's not schizophrenia. What was it the kid kept saying? You're not real? It's all fake, you're fake?

Fake. Odd choice of words to rebuke a hallucination. Fake implied a deliberate trickery, more so than the illusion implied by "not real."

"_The important thing to remember about instinct is that it's unlikely to hand you a complete solution on its own. It can tell you something's off, and half the time that something will be entirely different from what you thought it was."_

Robin's glare when he'd investigated her had been unlike anything he'd seen when they were dating.

"_Come on, you would've done the same thing."_

"_No, I would have thought about who you are, and trusted my gut. And so would the Don Eppes I knew."_

What if young Sam was terrified, traumatized – and far more lucid than you thought?

_"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."_

Didn't mean anything, right? Rape victims apologize. Hostages apologize. Criminals and bullies apologize when they realize they're going to jail. Lobell fits, of course he's going to be apologizing.

Okay, so he's been abused, he's afraid of you, and he's trying to talk his way out of a bad spot. He recognized your name and your voice, and he tried to beat himself unconscious against a wall when he figured out it was you.

So what's wrong?

I apologize when I feel bad, when I hurt someone without intending to. When I want to comfort someone, let them know I'm sorry for what they're going through.

Doesn't fit. You don't frame an FBI agent and then feel sorry for him afterwards. That's something you do out of hate, or at the very least pure self-interest.

Unless you didn't know what you were doing.

How is that even possible?

Don stood and paced back and forth, retrieving a piece of the gum Alan had brought him and chewing it to dispel some of his nervous tension.

"_Not real. You're not real!" _

"_It's all fake, you're fake, you're not real!"_

So – what, he thought he was playing some game? Here, take this bunch of recordings and make a tape framing this guy, and by the way, make sure it's good enough to fool an FBI crime lab? Oh, haha, don't worry, the guy's not real. That's just some dude acting like he's an FBI agent you're framing.

Acting.

Mixing – sound – movie studios. Don leaned against the metal door, peering out through the tiny window. The only thing out there was a blank wall on the other side of the hall, and his own heart thudding against the side of his chest.

Charlie said this guy did work for movie studios. They could give him the sound clips, tell him it was for a movie, and he'd so it without even blinking. An industry with an unlimited budget, one that could afford to drop a few million.

Don reached for his cell phone, and when his hand came up empty against the loose fabric of his jumpsuit, he wanted to scream. God, this was intolerable. Infuriatingly, unbelievably, miserably intolerable.

He looked up and down the blank hallway, the few feet that were visible to him. It was well after dinner. The place was locked down for the night, and the chances of his being successful at trying to beg, whine, and plead for access to a phone – well, Charlie wouldn't have to think long to place them at zero.

Don sat on the bunk and grabbed two big handfuls of his hair, groaning when he realized he was gripping tightly enough for it to hurt.

Let go, Eppes. He stood and paced some more, seriously tempted to kick the wall and scream and yell just to blow off this intolerable tension. His neighbors did it all the time, why not him?

He drew a deep breath. Because you're a damn FBI agent, because you can handle this, because you are not going to do one single thing that'll keep you from passing a psych eval when you get out. Because you're not going to give whoever reviews your application for reinstatement to active duty the slightest excuse to turn it down.

Don lay down on his side and picked up the book again, not even bothering to open it. It was just a prop. He eyed the constellation on the wall.

Faith? Trust?

In whom? In myself? In God? In my team? In my family? In the detention officers who could let me be killed with one mistake? He traced the stars with his finger and closed his eyes.

Yeah, Robin, I'm thinking about who they are, and trusting my gut. I trust them all. I have faith in the people in my life, and that's not conditional on how things work out for me, because I know what's in their hearts.

Maybe that's faith.


	14. Chapter 14

**Chapter 14**

**DAVID'S DESK, FBI OFFICE, 22 DAYS AFTER THE ARREST**

Charlie approached just as David was finishing up a conversation on his cell phone. "All right. You take care, okay? Remember we're all still here for you, every one of us. Yeah, uh-huh. Bye, boss."

The words in association with the unusually serious and caring expression on the senior agent's face told Charlie exactly who David had been speaking with. "Is he okay?"

"He has a hunch. Got an idea from something Lobell said that a movie studio might have hired him to make the recording."

Charlie frowned. "Why would a movie studio want to frame Don?"

Liz leaned over the partition. "Taking reality television to newer and even more tasteless lows?"

"His hunch wasn't kind enough to take it quite that far. But we don't seem to have much happening tonight, so brainstorming session in about two hours?"

**RECREATION ROOM, US DOJ METROPOLITAIN DETENTION CENTER**

Don was stretching after a brisk run on the treadmill when the door to the rec room was unlocked. The mandatory hour out of his cell was over far too soon, but he was staying fit and making the best of it. Being physically exhausted tended to make the rest of the time pass more easily. He didn't recognize the officer outside the door, and that small fact made his senses snap into sharp focus.

He knew all the detention officers who worked his unit. Their names, their working styles, even something of their carefully concealed personalities. They were professional, competent with a keen grasp on how to maintain control. This guy wore the insecure swagger of a novice.

Don raised his hands, palms forward in a submissive gesture, but he met the man's gaze squarely. "Who are you?"

"None of your business." The officer marched in with a tangled mess of shackles in one hand, the unguarded door open behind him. A group of general population prisoners was ambling down the hall, loosely escorted by a single guard.

This jackass was opening the door with twelve guys outside who could take them in a second. He was either stupid, incredibly careless, or this was a hit.

He angled sideways so that his face wasn't visible to the prisoners, and spoke to the officer in a low voice. "I'm an FBI agent. I'm in protective segregation. What happened to locking down the hall?"

The guy rolled his eyes. "Oh, yeah, cry me a river. Dirty cops are always the worst fucking whiners. Guess what, you're supposed to protect society, not the other way around."

It was looking like stupid and careless, which meant Don's chances of surviving the next few minutes were pretty good. "I haven't been convicted," he reminded the smaller man in as mild a voice as he could muster.

"Hands behind your head." Stupid and careless wanted to shackle him, that is if he could ever get the chains untangled. Don eyed the prisoners, two of whom had fallen behind the group and were starting to take a keen interest.

He focused on the officer and spoke calmly. "If you cuff me without locking the area down, you're putting my life on the line. Sure you wanna take responsibility for that?"

Stupid and careless swelled up his chest like a puffer fish, and Don girded his eardrums for the inevitable stream of shouted curses. His guess was that about ninety percent of them would be Full Metal Jacket misquotes. Instead, the guard raised his arm with a sudden swing and whipped the collection of metal sharply into Don's side and back.

Don blinked.

The blow was sharply painful, and the sensation only got worse in the following seconds, but Don was too startled to yelp. Instead he managed to control the reflex reaction to take the guy down, and blinked again. He'd never experienced any sort of genuine abuse from the detention officers, let alone deliberate physical cruelty, and it was taking him by surprise.

"Really? That's where you're going with this?" He knew he sounded like a smartass, but he'd seen the reaction the straggling prisoners had to the guard's attack. They averted their eyes and moved on, wanting no part of it. Given the choice of who was going to kick his ass, he'd take one ticked-off guard over a group of prisoners.

The last one vanished from sight, and he laced his fingers behind his head and stood still to allow himself to be cuffed. Arguing about clearing the halls was going to get nowhere; he was just going to have to hope they didn't run into anybody who recognized him.

The officer wrenched his arms behind his back without comment, and Don bit his lip to avoid reacting when the handcuffs were clamped around his wrists with incredible force. He added "cruel" to "stupid and careless" to keep his mind distracted from the pain.

Who the hell was this guy?

**WAR ROOM, FBI OFFICE**

"I know this has to be personal, but I just can't come up with a rational explanation for the methodology. I mean – I get that a lot of people might want to hurt Don, but considering the violence of the cases we've worked on, this hardly seems – well, sadistic enough," said Charlie.

Colby winced. "I was thinking the same thing. Just wasn't something I was wild about saying out loud in front of his kid brother. I'd say we either have an bizarrely evenhanded act of vengeance, or we're still missing something."

Charlie rubbed his forehead. "The movie studio angle?"

David sat forward in his chair. "We're running down all the studios Lobell did side jobs for. Could take a while, he wasn't overly concerned with paying his taxes so the records we got from Starscape aren't much help."

"Why would a movie studio want to frame Don?" asked Amita. "I mean – these are legitimate businesses with plenty of money and goodwill in the community."

"Well, the big studios are pretty clean, but any big corporation is vulnerable to employees on the take," said Liz. "I'd assume that if Don's right, we're still looking at a personal motive."

"Yeah, but what about the money?" asked Nikki. "If someone did this, they dropped millions. That implies the backing of-"

"Wait a minute. If? IF?" Charlie felt anger like no other flash over him, and he grabbed the sides of her shirt and shoved her against the white board. "If that's how you're thinking, get out of this room."

Charlie's legs flew out from under him, and before he had time to comprehend what was happening he was flat on the floor with his right arm twisted behind his back and Nikki's knee pressing down on his ribs. He squirmed, trying to catch his breath. "Ow. OW!"

"Do you know how many hours of my own damn time I've spent these last few weeks trying to clear your brother?"

"Get off him, NOW." There was a force behind David's order that Charlie had rarely heard from him, and it secured his immediate release.

Charlie rolled onto his side, gasping for breath and scared. Scared that he had just shown violence against a friend, a woman, an FBI agent. Scared of Nikki, and of the anger in David's voice. Scared of that word if, and the doubt and fatigue it implied.

"What the hell do you two think you're doing?" Charlie couldn't look at David. This had all the misery and disappointment of being yelled at by Don, without the familiarity that made it bearable. Don didn't even mean it half the time. "We're all exhausted, we're all stressed out, and we're all completely miserable because this isn't ending. We're all worried about Don and we've been letting him down for weeks. That is no damn excuse for going at each other's throats!"

"Nikki! Charlie is a civilian, what the hell do you think you're doing taking him down like that? Don't tell me for one second you thought you were in danger, if Don were here he'd kick your ass. Charlie, don't you ever touch one of my agents like that again, do you hear me?"

Charlie nodded, and Nikki responded with a clipped, "Yes, sir," before walking out.

After an incredibly awkward silence, Colby knelt down by Charlie, giving him a reassuring look. "Hey. It's okay. This is over."

"I'm so sorry." Charlie looked at Amita, who was standing frozen to the side, and wondered if he'd destroyed her trust in him. "I'm not violent, I never wanted to hurt her, I just – God." He closed his eyes, wanting to vanish into the floor.


	15. Chapter 15

**Chapter 15**

**WAR ROOM, FBI OFFICE**

Nobody spoke. Not because of shock, or anger, but out of sheer fatigue and realization of what David had said out loud for the first time.

Seeing Charlie's devastated expression, Colby had to smile. "Charlie, you didn't hurt her. If shoving someone against a board is what you do in a fit of rage, I think we're okay."

"Do you think she'll forgive me?" asked Charlie, not overly reassured. "Will – will you guys?"

Colby nodded, the look of affection on his face only deepening. "Look, we don't get the luxury of grudges. If you can't bounce back from conflict, you don't make it here, period." He grinned and gave the professor a gentle box on the arm. "Oh, and we beat the crap out of each other in training."

Charlie winced through his own tentative smile. "Now that I remember. Two days of FBI training and I could hardly walk."

"Fun, wasn't it?"

"Yes," Charlie admitted, grinning. "Yes – it was."

"On your feet, kiddo," said Colby, standing and pulling Charlie up with him. "We got a case to run."

**US DOJ METROPOLITAN DETENTION CENTER**

Don took several steps forward before overtightened leg irons forced him to stop, hunched over in a reflexive reaction to pain too severe to simply power through. He drew a deep breath and decided that he was far too effectively crippled by the restraints to make it back to the cell; whatever was going to happen he might as well just face it here.

"Watch your head."

Don didn't catch the meaning behind the amused drawl until the officer's leg swept up, hooking the chain between his ankles and jerking his legs out from under him. A palm struck the back of his skull, slamming his head against the metal door on the way down.

He landed with a spinning head and the nerves in his wrists and ankles screaming at being smashed between metal and bone. It was only a split second before instinct and anger took over, and he rolled to the side to dodge any kick that might be coming, preparing a furious retort.

_"Watch your head."_

_Slam._

It felt good, planting the mercurial bastard's face in the metal frame of the SUV. Wrong, but so deeply satisfying. They and half the emergency workers in the LA area spent more than 36 hours trying to rescue people from the wreckage of a train, and this guy's only regret seemed to be that he'd gotten caught. Never mind the deaths, never mind the innocent people forced to endure an eternity of pain and fear inside a crushed metal box.

The guilt came later, as he tried to fall asleep. Satisfaction of a job well done hampered by the image of himself, slamming a handcuffed prisoner against a truck. Hearing over and over again the cry of pain, or maybe just shock. Yeah, that was clever, Eppes.

"Watch your head." Because cruelty is always more fun when you can make a bad joke about it. Because there is just something so morally right about hurting a helpless person who's in your custody.

Don lay quietly on the floor, avoiding the detention officer's eyes. He wasn't going to provoke the man, but there would be no indignant outcries. As foreign as it was to him to not defend himself, there was something calm within telling him to simply endure this.

An alarm rang out, and he heard the electronic locks click shut along the hall. The control room must have been actually watching the cameras. He closed his eyes in relief even as a foot connected with his ribs. This wasn't a hit, and they were sending someone to stop this.

Right now, that was enough. He could make it through whatever beating this bully was intent on handing out, as long as it wasn't going to end with him in the middle of a gang of prisoners intent on revenge.

He gagged and forced air into his lungs, trying not to whimper or scream. Something told him playing possum was the only way to avoid provoking this guy, so he focused on trying to make his lungs work and resisting the urge to throw up.

Think about the tactical situation, not the pain. It was easier thought than done, especially when he tasted blood and felt his head start to spin into shock, instantly transported back to the night when a knife had almost ended his life.

He yelled at himself, gritting his teeth. You aren't dying, Don, it just feels like it. This is almost over. Stay alive for the next minute, Eppes, you got it made.

**WAR ROOM, FBI OFFICE**

"Okay, let's run down what we got," said David.

"I ran into another dead end in my analysis," said Charlie, pacing. "Using the information Liz gave me about the federal prisons Don might be sent to and the data about Don's cases that was already in my system, I ran models of everyone he's responsible for putting away, their family members, even close-knit social networks. Nothing matches up in any statistically significant way, when I consider what facilities he's likely to be confined in if he's convicted and the conditions under which he'll be held at each."

"Any word back from your buddies at the NSA?" asked David.

Charlie shook his head. "I spoke to them the other day, and their expert has been tied up with work of – um – higher national priority. They promised to get to it soon."

"Colby, any word on Lobell's condition?"

"Only that he's acquired a fire-breathing activist for a lawyer, and she'd like nothing more than to turn this into a major issue."

"I talked to Nychev," said Liz. "Nothing's coming back from handwriting analysis, so it's looking likely that the author of our note isn't in their system."

David rubbed his face, his fatigue and frustration plain. "Well, I do see all of this adding up to at least a lack of evidence against Don's theory. If we aren't dealing with known criminals, prisoners, or anything else that makes sense, we might as well look at it."

"I'm just not seeing motive," said Colby. "I get how a studio makes sense from the technical angle, making that recording, but that still doesn't tell us what they'd stand to gain."

"Does Don even have any cases involving movie studios right now?" asked Amita. "I know you guys have had a couple of cases in the past, but –"

"Nothing," said David. "And we already included the past cases in the data dump we gave Charlie. I poked my head into OC earlier today, and they said the only studio they're investigating currently is Starscape. If we go on the theory that a major studio with high-end equipment hired Lobell –" he shook his head. "The movie industry just doesn't screw with law enforcement."

"Well, they do make some really bad movies about us." Colby grinned.

"They also make some really bad movies about cheerleaders," said Liz, returning the wisecrack.

"Well, no offence, but Don's going to be watching a lot of bad movies about cheerleaders if we can't figure this out," said Charlie. "A little focus, maybe? Please?"

David looked irritated. "We're all doing our best, Charlie. We're not going to help this investigation any if we force ourselves to be as miserable as you at every minute. What you're seeing is focus, I'm sorry."

"That's it!" Charlie froze, staring at David. "This is about me, not Don."

"Wait a minute," said David. "I thought we already decided this was an unlikely way to hurt you."

"Hurting me isn't the point!" Charlie ran to the board and started scribbling furiously. "This isn't about revenge against me or Don, this is about distracting _me_." He spun back to face them.

"Think about it. If you want to commit a crime I'm likely to solve, you need a way to get me to stop working on it and devote all my time to something else."

"Like exonerating your brother," said Amita, beginning to sit upright and study what Charlie had written on the board.

"Right. If they kidnap an FBI agent, they bring down all the wrath and resources of the FBI on them, and they get caught. If they snatch me, they get Don in avenging angel mode, plus all the resources of the FBI."

"Plus, they get caught by Don and most likely end up looking like they lost an argument with a truck," commented Colby.

"But if they disgrace Don, they have to know the agency won't spend too much time digging into something they'd rather ignore, and I'll be spending every minute trying to clear his name. They wouldn't necessarily have a way to know how far you guys would go personally to save him."

Colby and David looked at each other. "It makes sense," said Colby.

Charlie grabbed his messenger bag and laptop with one hand and Amita with another. "I need to go back to my office. I'm going to review everything anyone has submitted to me for review or assistance recently."

"Really, Charlie, I'll come willingly," teased Amita, sticking her tongue out at Charlie when he realized he was half pulling her towards the door.

**US DOJ METROPOLITAN DETENTION CENTER**

It took less. Don recognized Anderson with a feeling of intense relief. The supervisor kicked cruel, stupid, and careless out with four well-chosen words and entered the rec room along with another officer Don recognized, leaving a third outside and locking the door behind them.

Anderson studied Don without speaking, his eyes doing a sober survey. Don didn't speak either. With his life out of danger, he concentrated on holding himself as still as humanly possible. The nerves in his arms and legs were trembling thanks to being crushed against the hard metal restraints. It was a source of agony, but freezing in place was the only way to find any relief at all. Even the slight movement of breathing hurt, so he tried to focus elsewhere and ignore his ghosts.

After a complete but mercifully brief inspection, Kevin Anderson waved his PDA to the officer outside the room as he knelt beside Don. "Stream me CCTV footage from the incident, right away."

Anderson unlocked the handcuffs and eased them off with great care, and Don didn't bother to stop a small cry of pain from escaping his throat. It hurt like hell, but this guy wasn't going to exploit that, and crying out helped distract from the worst few seconds. The officer touched his arm gently in understanding, giving him a moment to recover and brace himself before undoing the leg shackles.

Another brief scream, and Don went limp on the floor, closing his eyes. The relief was instant, all of the other throbbing inputs from his body willing to take a temporary back seat. It was over. He was alive and in caring hands, without serious injury, and he gave himself the time to steady his heart rate and appreciate those facts.

Anderson seemed content to back off and simply sit while he came down from the incident, for which Don was profoundly grateful. What he really wanted was a friend, the couch at the house, and a cold beer - but Anderson's willingness to give him space and the understanding that reflected made him the best company that could be hoped for under the circumstances.

"Mind if I sit?" Don asked after a minute. Anderson didn't reply, but simply reached for his hand and helped him up. He clearly wasn't going to ask what had happened. The camera footage would tell the story without embellishment.

Don rubbed his aching wrists and wondered just how to react, closing his eyes briefly to catch his breath. He probed the ribs on his right side with caution. Bruises, but nothing cracked, he decided.

He could feel itchy warmth of blood on the side of his head, but it seemed superficial and he left well enough alone. Wiping it away would just give these guys a potential biohazard to deal with. Circulation was returning, but the backs of his hands remained numb. Nerve damage from the misused handcuffs, one indignity he knew he'd never inflicted on a suspect.

"_Woah, woah. Get off him!"_

"_You can't do that here, man."_

He'd thrown his own body between dangerous suspects and a pissed-off Gary Walker. Taken down violent, combative thugs and murderers. He understood why people felt the urge to rough up suspects, but it wasn't him. The desire to hurt anyone who didn't make him do so simply wasn't there.

You're not that guy, okay?

You've never done to anyone what he just did to you, you've never even wanted to. Stop thinking like you deserve it.

He raised his head, and recognized with sharp discomfort the tense, conflicted expression on Anderson's face as he watched the video feed on the PDA. He'd worn it himself. Looking at a nineteen-year-old killer crumpled over on a table in the interrogation room after Don gave the scariest agent he knew free rein.

Yeah, you deserve it.

Oh, God. Don felt his skin grow cold, and he actually shivered. This is victim thinking.

"Eppes?" Anderson's gaze was intensely perceptive, and Don didn't try to hide from it.

It took me mere seconds to make this something I deserved. That's – that's scarier to me than looking a serial killer in the eyes with no gun.

That was something you said to your therapist, not something the head of the LA violent crimes squad revealed to a prison supervisor. "Guess I just don't like realizing I'm human."

Anderson raised an eyebrow, well aware that wasn't Don's first choice of answers. "You want scary, try realizing you're not sure you are. You know the difference between you and every other prisoner up there?" asked Anderson.

"Maybe not."

"When you look at us, you don't see an enemy or an authority figure. You see a colleague." He studied Don. "That'd do a number on anyone."

"Yeah." Don traced the ugly red line around his wrist with one finger. He's right. You're being held prisoner by your peers, that's gonna complicate matters. If someone at the FBI did this to you, you'd be one confused puppy. "Who was that guy?" he asked finally.

"Contractor from one of the private prisons. We've had a bunch of guys call in sick with this flu bug that's going around, so the DOJ sent in some temps." Anderson's voice hardened. "I'm not a fan."

Don nodded. "You gonna file a beef with us?" asked Anderson. It wasn't a hostile question, and Don met his eyes.

"You need me to? In order to discipline jackass out there?"

"No. Jackass out there won't be finishing his shift. Ever."

"Nah," said Don. "It's all good."

Anderson touched him on the hand. "Thank you." He studied Don closely. "You're bleeding. Do you have a concussion?"

"I doubt it." Don grinned at him. "Just a sore head. I've been told it's pretty hard though."

Anderson chuckled. "Well, let's get you back to your cell, and I'll have a nurse patch you up and get you on some pain meds, okay?"

Don faked a thoughtful frown. "I dunno, is she pretty?"

Anderson grinned. "She's a he."

"Damn."

Anderson helped him to his feet, giving him a questioning glance before moving in with handcuffs. _Can you handle this? _

Don nodded.

**FBI PARKING GARAGE**

"Charlie." Nikki was leaning back against the concrete support post where she had been waiting.

Charlie flinched, instinctively backing towards his car. "Must we discuss this?" he asked.

"No. Something else." She uncrossed her arms. "You want to have your trust in people shattered, try having a cop you hero-worship turn out to be dirty. No frame-up, these guys confessed to things that – I would have staked my life on the fact they weren't capable of."

She looked down at the ground. "I didn't even like Don when I started here, but now he's the first guy I've let myself come even close to putting back up on that pedestal. So, yeah, I'm trying to brace myself for the chance he's guilty. It's not the kind of pain I can go through again."

Charlie approached her, carefully as one might an injured animal. "I – didn't understand, I'm so, so sorry."

She couldn't look at Charlie. "I adore Don, and I'll do whatever it takes to prove him innocent. But – I would have done that for them too."

**EPPES RESIDENCE**

"Why won't you look at me, Charlie?" asked Amita.

"Did I scare you? Going after Nikki like that?"

She took Charlie by surprise by laughing out loud. "Charlie, you shoved an FBI agent and got your ass handed to you on a platter. How exactly is that supposed to scare me?"

She pushed him back, pinning his shoulders with her palms in an act of playful aggression. There was still worry behind the mischievous smile that invoked, and she kissed his forehead. "Charlie, why are you so convinced that Don is innocent?"

"Because I know him. Why?"

"Because that's the same reason I don't fear your carefully hidden violent streak. You know, the one where you fly into a rage over perceived slights and beat up FBI agents."

That got a laugh, and he looked up at her with pure adoration. "You are wonderful, you know that?"

She kissed the lines on his forehead again. "And you're unbearably cute when you're worried, did you know that?"

**SEGREGATION UNIT, US DOJ METROPOLITAN DETENTION CENTER**

Don rested his head on the pillow and closed his eyes. He wasn't fond of being on narcotic pain meds, but he'd obeyed Anderson's gentle insistence that the nurse dope him. He just didn't see what the appeal was to addicts. They just made him spaced out and sleepy, neither of which were fantastic attributes in an FBI agent.

He was relaxed though.

And comfortable.

Okay, Anderson knew what he was about. If you had to be stuck in solitary confinement after being kicked around by a guard, this wasn't a half bad way to handle it. Drug-induced contentment had significant advantages over post-incident stress, given the lack of friends around to laugh it off with.

He opened his eyes and did a lazy survey of the cell, coming to an odd conclusion. He felt safe, even at peace. He frowned. Drugs? Stockholm?

His growing affection for the officers did seem to resemble it. He was more grateful to them for protecting him and treating him fairly than he was upset about being confined so strictly. He'd just been cruelly attacked, and what stood out more in his mind was not the careless injustice, but the quiet kindness of Anderson's response to him afterwards.

So, is this Stockholm syndrome, self-deception, or simply choosing not to be miserable? Am I turning into a victim, or am I just confused as hell because my own guys are holding me prisoner?


	16. Chapter 16

**Author's ramblings:** _Thank you so, so much for your continuing reviews (which I read and re-read over and over again!). You inspire me, make me smile, and imbue me with the desire to make this story the best that I possibly can. I literally couldn't do it without you. Thanks to CerealKillerZero for making the suggestion about including the reactions of other recurring characters – what would have been a throwaway line or two to tie up a loose plot end is now a fun little brush with Gary Walke_r.

**Chapter 16 **

**WAR ROOM, FBI OFFICE, 25 DAYS AFTER THE ARREST**

"I think I may have found what we're looking for." Charlie opened his laptop on one of the desks, fumbling in his hurry to connect the display to the large presentation screen at the head of the room. Line after line of computer code scrolled across the screen, and Charlie looked around the room in triumph.

"Uhhh – what are we looking at here, Charlie?" asked David.

"What you're looking at is the motive for framing Don," said Charlie. "I – think."

Colby scratched his head. "You know, maybe it's just me, but when I see a bunch of computer code, I tend to get a headache, not an uncontrollable urge to frame an FBI agent."

"Ah, but see, the code is irrelevant. What's interesting here is the advanced mathematical equations the code is designed to handle. This application was developed by a grad student at MIT who was adapting saber metrics to predict the success of motion pictures based on an enormous number of variables."

"Aren't there already programs that do that? Tell you where you need a chase scene, and that sort of thing?" asked Liz.

"Yeah, like goofball with his CinePal racket." said Colby.

"Yes. But those are crude implements, mainly focused on plot development. The success of a major, big-budget film depends on so many variables that it's literally impossible for a human being to account for them all. That's the reason you have huge movies that flop, costing studios millions of dollars, and surprise hits that nobody anticipated would find a large audience."

"It doesn't seem so hard to me," said Colby. "Those big-budget flops fail because they suck, it doesn't seem like it should take a genius or a bunch of math to figure that out."

"Well – it's easy for a member of the audience, viewing a finished version of the film, to decide if they think a movie is good or not. But what the audience can't know, and what the investors backing the production have been unable to predict, are the influences which lead to the finished project becoming a commercial success or to it failing miserably."

"You see, making a movie is such a complex creative and commercial endeavor that it's very difficult to control the end result. Thousands of people can have an integral role in the production. Writing, casting, directing, acting, scoring, photography, set design, editing, scheduling, budgets, filming locations, personnel issues, current events, celebrity reputations, publicity – all of these things work together to determine the outcome of your film and how it's received by your audience."

Charlie clicked through screens on the software. "This allows a filmmaker to connect to hundreds of databases and test the probable impact of various decisions on the commercial viability of a movie."

"And where do you come in to all of this?" asked David.

"Well – the thing is, the program doesn't work. My colleague at MIT sent it to me in the hopes that I could discover where the flaw in the math was."

"I think I see where this is going," said David. "Any studio that managed to get its hands on this and make it work before anyone else would have a huge advantage over its competitors."

"Right," said Charlie. "And it would make sense that they would want to delay the general release of this application to maintain their advantage for as long as possible."

"I don't know about you guys, but this is starting to look a lot like a lead to me," observed Colby.

"Me too," agreed Liz. "I like the money side of it. We're talking huge financial motive here, and a big player in the film industry could afford to hire whoever they needed for the setup."

"And it's quite possibly the people they hired would think the work was legitimate, right?" asked David. "I mean, they could conceivably do this with relatively few people even knowing anything illegal was taking place."

"It's possible," said Liz.

"Okay, let's start working it," said David.

**US DOJ METROPOLITAN DETENTION CENTER, 26 DAYS AFTER THE ARREST**

Charlie gulped. There was large bruise on Don's forehead, and a cut taped together with butterfly bandages. His mind added to it the memory of his brother sitting on the bumper of an ambulance bleeding from a gunshot wound to the arm. I couldn't predict it. Didn't predict it, but I acted like – I thought like I could.

Don sat with an air of enduring the inevitable, wincing as he eased himself into the chair. Charlie remembered his face screwed up in pain as he positioned himself on the couch that first day back from the hospital. I was distracted, and full of myself.

He folded his hands on the table, ugly purple and yellow bruises entirely circling his wrists. I was born. An ability I never asked for makes me someone who turned his life upside down. Because I'm gifted at math, he's sitting here in a jail going through who only knows what kind of hell. No wonder he hated me when we were kids.

"Don, I'm so sorry." Charlie sat and closed his eyes, losing the courage to tell him what they suspected.

You're here because of me.

"Easy, buddy." Don resisted the urge to reach across the table and give Charlie's hands a reassuring squeeze. "I know how it looks, but I'm fine."

"Of course." Charlie gulped. "You look – if by fine you mean like a walking torture victim!"

"Nah, nothing of the sort. Some contractor had insecurity issues that didn't work out so well for me. They're taking good care of me, buddy, I promise. I don't want you to feel bad, all right?"

Charlie remained silent, staring in confusion at the marks on his brother's body and the calm in his eyes. What variables would have to come into play in order for such abuse to take place, and for Don to respond with a complete lack of hurt or anger?

For his part, Don was returning the exploration. Talking to Charlie about his work could be problematic, but their years working together had given him a better understanding of the world Don inhabited. The shock and the hurt he'd expected were certainly there, but his brother wasn't retreating into blind trauma. He was calm, and willing to try to understand.

"You know – when I first started out, I was so terrified that some day I'd send an innocent person to jail. Then it was what if I shoot the wrong guy. Then it was – what if I screw up and thousands of people die. Now – I just don't even know which way is up."

Charlie frowned. "I'm guessing that wasn't you asking me for a refresher course on spatial dimension theory."

"Ha ha. I never thought the system was perfect, hell, I don't think anyone does. I've always just figured it's the best we've got, and as we continue to evolve as human beings, maybe we'll be able to make it better. Thought maybe I could make it better, by doing the job right."

"Well – you are are doing that," said Charlie. "Surely you haven't convinced yourself you belong in here."

Don shrugged. "Up here, in that cell – I'm at peace a lot of the time." He gave Charlie a calm look that asked for his contemplation and understanding, not a denial.

Charlie looked back, understanding the odd look in his brother's eyes the last couple of times he had visited. It _was_ peace.

They sat for what seemed like a long time in silence, simply content to have reached some level of comprehension. Neither knew exactly what to think or feel, but they were content to let the barriers of childhood and pride and misunderstanding step aside for the moment.

Don's expression was sober and troubled when he finally spoke again. "Look – I sent an innocent guy away for murder, and he was in prison for more than a year before I figured it out. I've always dreaded the day maybe I hear I did it again, or maybe I shoot the wrong guy. Maybe – maybe it's just my time to pay for the times I went wrong, you know?"

"You don't deserve this, Don. You know you don't. You've done so much for people – people you didn't even know."

"I've hurt a lot of people, too," said Don softly. "Some didn't leave me any choice, but some of them just got in my way, or I didn't care enough to watch what I said or did to an innocent person because I was too busy hunting down a bad guy."

He leaned back in the metal chair, relaxed and meeting Charlie's eyes with an unguarded frankness. "Don't worry, I'm not wallowing in it. Just thinking – maybe it's not such a bad thing, to know what it feels like being on this side of the table."

Charlie studied his older brother. He looked tired, a day's stubble on his chin and hair un-brushed. He couldn't decide if the slouch was relaxation or deep depression, and finally he gave up. "Don't start thinking you belong here, okay?"

"You know –" Don twiddled his thumbs for a moment, staring at his hands. "Kinda scary how well I fit in. What if I'm just another guy who kills people? Turns his back while one of my agents tortures a teenage boy? I had my reasons and I stand by 'em, but maybe I'm justifying it like the others in here. I can't look at what's happening to me and say it's all that unfair, or I don't deserve it."

"Don – I know how much these things haunt you. But isn't that just the thing, that people who justify their amoral actions think they _don't_ deserve to be in prison?"

Don looked sad. "Yeah. But moral people sometimes belong in prison too. I've arrested a few pretty decent guys, you know."

"You know – when we were kids, you could be really, really mean." A look of concern grew on Don's face, and Charlie stopped him with a raised hand.

"But you were always protecting people, too. It was as though you had this beautiful ideal of compassion, and you just didn't know how to respond when people were cruel so you lashed out. You had an innate drive to right wrongs, and you didn't know how. It made you nuts."

Don gave him a small smile. "Wanna know a secret? It still does."

"I know," said Charlie with a soft look at his brother. "It seems like you've got such an integral desire for things to be fair that you're willing to make being jailed and beaten something you deserve instead of the complete and total injustice that it really is."

"Thing is – what happens when I commit a wrong in the process of trying to right one? I mean – I've never believed in all that 'the ends justify the means' crap, but it's what I do. Don't like revenge either, and I spend all my time collecting people for punishment. I've killed more people than most of the murderers I arrest, and I probably feel less guilt about it than they do. I believe in what I do, it's just – confusing."

"Okay," said Charlie. "I won't say you're wrong, and I won't say it isn't disturbing to think about or that I could ever, ever kill someone. But you aren't motivated by a desire to punish people, you're motivated by a desire to protect the people they try to hurt, right?"

Don nodded. "Yeah." He groaned and leaned his elbows on the table. "You know, I found out that one case was bad, I looked into the statistics for false convictions – it's horrifying. And those are just the ones we actually find out about. But for all those, we've got ten more guilty people out walking around free, and that just seems like salt in the wounds."

"Well – not to discount the problem, which, I'll grant you is terrible to think about – this isn't an accident of the system. Framing you was a criminal act, and one that was done very deliberately. I don't think you can hold your profession any more responsible for this than you can for murder, or fraud."

"Do you think I'm losing it in here?" asked Don.

Charlie thought about it, and looking at Don's expression, something in him melted. "I think there's a certain beauty in any human impulse that meets injustice and cruelty with something better."

Don closed his eyes and lowered his head for a minute, touched. "Wow – buddy. I could call this a lot of things, I'm not sure beautiful is one of them."

"You know how when we're kids, we've got answers for everything and we're going to make the world a better place?"

"Yeah?"

"Well, maybe you don't have all the answers any more, but you're still trying to make the world a better place. I'd call that beautiful."

**BULL PEN, FBI OFFICE, 27 DAYS AFTER THE ARREST**

"That was a mighty tasty bone you boys threw us," said a dry drawl from behind David. He turned to see LAPD's Gary Walker, sipping a cup of coffee. He raised it in a salute.

"We just found Kitty Lobell's body, and it didn't take the whiz kids in forensics long to tie the murder to Traxler Lobell."

"Well," said David, smiling. "About time I heard some good news around here. He in custody?"

Walker leaned against the partition. "Sure thing, Sinclair. If we're lucky, might even catch a break on some of his other activities."

"Nice," said David, glancing around his desk and raising a cup of pens and pencils in a return toast. "Congratulations."

"Nice to see you folks still know how to play nice with the LAPD without your boss around."

"Yeah." David drew the word out, looking away and hunting for a file folder. Unfortunately for David, Walker didn't have any qualms about ignoring his not so subtle cues.

"He guilty, Sinclair?"

David sighed. "No."

"You gonna be able to prove that?"

"We're working on it."

Walker sipped his coffee. "You know, that man has his own unique style of law enforcement."

David remained silent. Tell me something about my boss I don't know. Better yet, don't talk to me about unique styles of law enforcement there, okay?

"Not much out there that shocks me any more."

David stood. "Anything else I can do for you, sir?"

"Eppes committing online fraud, now that would about do it. I'm not here to interfere in family matters, Sinclair. Just wanted you to know if you boys need help from our direction, all you gotta do is ask."

David nodded. "Okay."

"Okay." Walker turned around and headed for the elevators. On impulse, David called out to him.

"One thing." He caught up with Walker and handed him the folder with the case overview. "We don't really think Traxler Lobell is involved in the setup. But I'd like to know for sure."

Walker took the folder with a sly smile. "Well, I'll just see what we can find."


	17. Chapter 17

**CHAPTER 17**

_Sorry this took so long. My muse went on vacation right when I needed to line up some plot points carefully, and that resulted in a long delay. Good news is, the next chapter is almost written as well._

**BULL PEN, FBI OFFICE, 28 DAYS AFTER THE ARREST**

David took off his jacket and tossed it over the back of his chair. "So, I just got back from meeting with Sam Lobell's lawyer. Apparently he wants to talk, but there are strings attached. Lobell's still heavily medicated and pretty unstable. His lawyer wants the AUSA to sign a stipulation that we agree anything he says will be inadmissible in court, and we agree not to attempt to present it as evidence."

"Better than nothing," said Liz. "Do we even really care about prosecuting him?"

David gave her a small smile and shook his head. "They also want the file sealed under witness protection so that there's no way Traxler Lobell's defense attorneys or his associates can learn that he talked to us. It'll restrict how we're able to go forward if he gives us a name."

"Well –" Colby shrugged. "Having to be careful with how we investigate is better than not having anything to investigate."

"I agree," said David. "The last thing is, Lobell's not interested in talking to us. He only wants to talk to Don."

Liz smiled, glancing away. "Don must have made an impression on the kid."

"Video feed?" asked Colby.

David nodded. "Set it up?" He handed Colby a sheet of paper. "They'll let us have him any time in the afternoon tomorrow or the next day, see what you can coordinate with the detention center."

**US DOJ METROPOLITAN DETENTION CENTER, 28 DAYS AFTER THE ARREST**

"Damn it, Charlie! You sat across from me while I spilled my heart out to you, and you don't have the nerve to tell me about a major development in my case?"

Don let out a tightly held breath and shook his head in utter frustration. "Look – I don't blame you for the fact that some mercurial bastard sent me to jail to boost his profit margin, and if you think I'm that much of an asshole, maybe you're still as out of touch with reality as you were ten years ago. But I do blame you for being afraid to tell me."

Charlie shrunk down in his chair. "I was afraid – you'd react like this."

Years of working together, and Don still had the ability to break his heart apart with his words while Charlie wished desperately to convey _I adore you, I admire you, I didn't mean to screw up_. The ability to make Professor Charles Eppes feel about six years old.

"Oh, for the love of –" Don clenched his jaw, trying to contain the words that would merely send their fragile relationship back into a tailspin. He forced himself to remember Charlie hiding the fact that he was being stalked on the road, because of his overreaction to a chewing out. What was it Alan had said? He's not one of your agents?

"You're not one of my agents!" Don snapped. "You're my own damn family! I – look, I meant it when you said you could tell me anything. What I can't stand is when you hide stuff because, what, you don't have the nerve to risk getting yelled at? Do you seriously think –" he cut off his own words and groaned.

"Look – I told you things about me and the messed up stuff in my head that I've never shared with anyone, okay, buddy? That was me trusting you. A lot, you know?"

"I know," Charlie said, subdued. "That meant a great deal to me, I didn't want to ruin it. Maybe I just wanted to pretend for one day that we could have that kind of relationship."

"Charlie –" Don shook his head again in disbelief at how much his younger brother could need things spelled out for him at times. "Look – I just don't get you sometimes. But I don't ever want you getting that confused with the fact that I love you, all right? No matter how ticked off I get, that's not gonna change."

Charlie's head snapped up, and he stared at Don, his eyes wide open in shock. After a few utterly confused blinks, he asked, "You love me?"

"Some genius," said Don, his voice playful. It was utterly serious for his next words. "Of course I love you, buddy."

Charlie's eyes filled with tears, and he squirmed in his seat, looking around the bleak little visiting room for an escape route. Finding none, he simply shrank down even further.

"You're scared, aren't you?" Charlie asked finally, a choked whisper all he could force out of his throat. "Do you think you're going to be killed? Are you saying goodbye to me? Because –"

"No!" Don drew a deep breath and forced himself to consider the grief and love this confusing curly-haired bundle of emotion and numbers was experiencing. Damn this table between them, and the guard and the rules that reduced the limits of human interaction to words.

Trying to be more careful not to hurt people starts at home, right, Eppes?

"Charlie." Don kept his voice soft. "Of course I'm scared, anyone would be. But I trust all of you to sort this out, and I'm not gonna get killed, all right? I really come off as this much of a hardass?"

"Well – " Charlie braved meeting his eyes. "You've never said that before."

Don frowned. "Course I have. Well, maybe not in words, but - I'm just not into spelling out the obvious."

"Well, some of us aren't that smart, you know. We need things spelled out for us." Charlie's playful grin overshadowed the dampness in his eyes, and Don couldn't resist a return smile.

**WAR ROOM, FBI OFFICE, 28 DAYS AFTER THE ARREST**

Charlie froze in mid-sentence when Robin slipped in quietly, hanging to the back of the room. She was like a ghost, appearing in the office as an apparition that vanished when the living took excessive notice. "I'm glad you came," said Charlie.

"I'm here on an unrelated matter," she said. She sat and gave them all a pointed glance. "I thought I'd wait here until Liz has time to talk to me about the Richardson case."

Charlie smiled. "Of course." The pain behind Robin's blank expression tugged at his heart, but he turned away and brought up the software on screen.

"I've been spending some time with this program, and Amita and I were able to find the underlying errors and correct them. If we could do it in such a relatively short period of time, I'm confident that another relatively skilled mathematician would be able to achieve the same results."

"Relatively skilled…want to define that for me?" suggested David.

"Well – not your average mathematician," said Charlie. "But given some time to devote entirely to this project, if wouldn't take a – well, it wouldn't take someone like me. We're definitely looking for someone with a high level of talent and probably someone not unknown to the academic community."

"Well, Lobell says he'll talk to Don. If he gives us the name of a studio, we can get you a list of all the employees. Do you think you could recognize potential suspects based on that?"

"Sure – of course," said Charlie.

David's phone rang. After a brief discussion he tucked it back in his pocket with a sigh. "Gonna have to cut this one short, LAPD's pulling us in on a bank robbery."

**BREAK ROOM, FBI OFFICE, TEN MINUTES LATER**

Charlie followed Robin in and fixed two cups of coffee, handing one to her. She looked at Charlie, still not speaking.

"Robin?" Charlie asked.

She sipped her coffee. "I'm scared." She took several moments to think before speaking again. "Alan said one of the guards beat him up."

Charlie nodded. "I don't think it bothers him all that much, though. You know him, he's physically – well, insanely brave."

Robin winced. "I know." She flicked her eyes up at Charlie for a second, uncomfortable discussing Don with another person. "Is he coping okay with being in solitary confinement?" Her face twisted and she turned sideways to Charlie, leaning on the counter.

Charlie sat down in one of the chairs, sharing Robin's discomfort and trying to formulate a response. "He's stable."

Robin's back was to him, her words clipped. "He's suffering."

"He's questioning himself, maybe more than usual," said Charlie. He stopped. This felt wrong. Don and Robin were too emotionally private for him to be treading on this territory.

Charlie set down his cup and approached Robin, touching her shoulder. There were deeply held emotions there that words couldn't address.

She accepted the invitation and almost collapsed into his arms. Robin closed her eyes and pressed her face against Charlie's shoulder, letting him feel the worry and tension that filled every inch of her body. Charlie did the same, stroking her back while they both gained some measure of comfort. "I think he knows he's loved," said Charlie very quietly.


	18. Chapter 18

**Chapter 18 **

**NORTH ALAMEDA STREET, 29 DAYS AFTER THE ARREST**

Robin Brooks was stuck in traffic.

In front of the federal detention center.

She looked out at the tall, angular building. It and others like it held no particular novelty to her; they had long ago become workplaces like any other. A courtroom, an office, a jail, an airport…they all blended together. Not for Don, though. He thought nobody noticed his slight discomfort when he walked into a prison; he was probably right. Except for her.

The jarring symphony of horns told her that traffic wasn't planning to move in the foreseeable future, and Robin picked up the reports. She skimmed over the details of the assault, not out of squeamishness but because she was unable to apply the clinical description of events to the warm, living person she knew as Don. Words like _contusions, abrasions_, and _temporary nerve damage_ stuck in her mind nonetheless, as she sought the end of the story.

_Calm._

_Compliant._

_Accepted nurse's recommendation for medical treatment._

_Pleasant and good-humored in interactions with staff._

_Demonstrates understanding of the nature of the assault._

She set the file down and stared out the window, through the walls, and into a small cell occupied by Don Eppes. Why was this haunting her so much? Many times now she had pulled back clothing to find bruises and cuts from the day's scuffles. Marks he didn't bother to mention, and which never seemed to disturb him the way other aspects of his cases so often did.

Robin knew in her heart that Don was miserable. End the career that was his identity, falsely accuse him of betraying everything that he was, and lock him up so that he was helpless to do anything about it. Force him to face that alone in a cell away from the people he loved, and you had a recipe for hurting Don Eppes very deeply.

If anything should torture her, it was that, not something he was more than capable of shrugging off. Something a report stated in black and white that he _had_ shrugged off.

She looked at the report again and felt the warmth of tears in her eyes. This was Don they were talking about, being kicked in handcuffs. Don, who under that invulnerable shell, knew more about tenderness than most people would ever guess.

That was the travesty, that was what had her in tears. Hit him, and he would simply deal with it. Sure, it could be easy to get the impression of someone too hardened to feel.

Unless one knew how his entire being melted at a gentle touch, or how the tension in his eyes would vanish at the least tenderness in hers. This wasn't a person who couldn't feel, this was a man who felt everything.

**US DOJ METROPOLITAN DETENTION CENTER, 1 MONTH AFTER THE ARREST**

Sam Lobell approached the camera, looking uncertainly at the image.

"Hey, Sam. You doing okay, kiddo?" Don asked, adjusting the monitor on his end for a clearer view.

Sam gulped. "Yeah. You?"

Don shrugged, a smile twitching his lips. "In jail."

Sam paced. "Look - if my dad finds out I talked to the cops - I - he will kill me." He faced away from the screen, staring at the wall.

"Sam, I promise you, my team will investigate without putting you in danger. I get how scared you are, all right? I'm not just saying that. But we're the FBI. We're really good at protecting witnesses."

"Okay." Sam crumpled into the chair by the monitor screen. "You - you're going to be really mad at me. I didn't mean it - have your guys beat me up or something, just promise you won't tell him."

Don raised one eyebrow, looking at Sam with intense sympathy. "Sam, I meant it back when I said I wasn't angry. Nobody's going to beat you, kiddo, I promise. There's no way, all right? There's no way."

Sam bit his lip, his eyes filling with tears at the kindness in Don's expression. "Yeah, I made the recording. It was a job for Talbott Studios, for a movie. They never said I was framing an FBI agent! You were just a character, actors, they told me, you weren't a real person. I've tried - I wanted to make a career, you know?"

Lobell folded his arms on the table and buried his head in them. Don wondered if the stress of their conversation had been too much for him. "I thought I was going to prison, you know? For something I never meant – it wasn't my fault." He was shaking, his head still hidden. "I wanted to kill myself – I wanted to die – couldn't stop –"

"It's over," said Don, his voice gentle. "You're okay."

Sam shook his head. "I did that to you. I'm so sorry – I didn't know you were real – I just can't stand that I did that to you, you know? To anyone, but you were nice -"

He was sobbing, his shoulders shaking. Someone walked into the frame and touched him lightly on the back. "Sam?" She tapped on the table to get his attention. "Sam, it's okay. I think you should go now, okay?"

"I'm sorry." He didn't look up or stop shaking. "I'm so sorry." The woman took his hand and urged him to stand, and Sam snapped his head up. "Get the fuck away from me!"

She backed off, and Don studied the feed. "I heard about your mother," said Don, thinking about Margaret and the years it took for that ache to fade. "I'm sorry."

Sam braved a look at the screen, his face breaking. "She was a good person. I've tried - I've tried to be like her."

"Yeah, look - I lost my mom a little while back." Don drew in a deep breath. "Your father's going away for murder, Sam. That'll never give her back or make it hurt less. But you don't have to live in fear any more, okay? Growing up like you did, and having the strength to choose another path? You'll have that career of yours."

"Am I gonna go to prison?" Lobell braced himself, closing off what vulnerability he could.

Don shook his head with a soft smile. "Nah. I do need to ask you a few more questions, though, okay?"

Lobell nodded, his shoulders relaxing in relief. "Where'd you actually made the recording? Whose gear did you use?"

"At Talbott. They have a M2K-300 setup there, totally fucking amazing. Like, you can do anything you can imagine with music, sound - it's awesome. Costs millions – I'd work for free, just to play with toys like that."

"And who were you working for? Who hired you, told you what they wanted, that sort of thing?"

"It was just one guy - Rob Girsh. I've worked for Talbott before, but never him. He said it was all hush-hush, for some big movie they had in production. The sound room techs were the same guys I've always worked with, they didn't have anything to do with it."

Don nodded. "Okay, Sam. Thank you. I really mean that, kiddo. Thank you. Do you mind if I ask you something else?" Sam looked at the screen suspiciously, still searching Don's face for anger or condemnation. He braved a half-nod.

"That agent who questioned you, his name's David Sinclair, and he's a friend. He's a really, really good guy, and he's going to make sure nothing happens to you. If he has some questions later, think you could talk to him for me?"

Sam sighed. "Okay." He closed his eyes, wrestling with a decision. "You were right. About the tattoo. Not many guys get that, I'm surprised a cop did."

"Figuring people out is kinda my job," said Don. The woman appeared again, more determined this time.

"Sam, you're been through enough stress for one day, okay?" Sam nodded. "You can talk to him some more later, all right?" The woman glanced up, met Don's eyes for a split second, and turned the camera off.

Don stood and took a deep breath, assuring himself that the conversation had been real, not just something he made up to keep his mind occupied in his cell.

He admitted it, on tape. We have a name. That's - that's probable cause to re-open the investigation. That's a real, actual lead.

Don raised his head and realized that while he'd been focusing on Lobell, the guard at the door had been replaced with Kevin Anderson. Their eyes met in a deadly serious gaze. Anderson didn't know all the details of the case, but it was enough to recognize the implications of what he had just heard.

Neither man spoke while Anderson applied the familiar restraints to Don's wrists and ankles, moving efficiently but taking care not to put undue pressure on the bruises that still marked him. Don recognized the deeply troubled expression on the officer's face. It was a horrible feeling, knowing you had a potentially innocent person in custody.

Anderson saw the understanding look and gave Don's arm a soft pat, leading him out of the room. There was an incredible sense of compassion in that wordless touch, and Don felt something in his gut relax. A few moments later, he knew what it was.

For the first time in a month, he actually believed he was going to be okay. It wasn't a feeling born of desperation or helplessness, but of actual faith and hope. He was walking down the hall feeling like an FBI agent, not some mutant cross between a kicked puppy and sociopath.

**WAR ROOM, FBI OFFICE**

Charlie rubbed his forehead when the screen went blank. "Am I the only one who found that completely heartbreaking on any number of levels?"

"No," said David, sighing. "It's the best news we've had since Don's arrest, though."

Charlie felt a surge of hope. "They'll let Don go now, right? Since he admitted he made the recording?" He leapt to his feet, and David's face went dark.

Vic Nychev touched Charlie's shoulder, giving him a sympathetic look. "I'm afraid not. There's a rock-solid case against him even without the recording. This might help him establish reasonable doubt in court if it could be used without putting Lobell in jeopardy, but it's not enough to keep it from going to trial."

Charlie sat back down heavily in the chair, feeling like someone had taken a baseball bat to his heart. Nychev knelt down to his level.

"Hey, I think you get this, but in case I need to say it, I don't have it in for Eppes, okay? Not at all. I'm going to take what we just saw up the chain of command, and I'm going to see about officially re-opening the case."

"This is still a very, very good thing, Charlie," said David.

Charlie nodded, forcing a smile to his face and wondering how such good people could find themselves part of such a travesty. Is this the utterly, horribly illogical manner in which the human species will always behave? How can it be that everyone involved in this is intelligent, caring, and honest, and this is still the inevitable outcome? My brother led back to a cell in chains?

"Do you realize what just happened here?"

"I think so," said Charlie, burying his face in his hands.

"I don't think you do," said David with a smile that reached just to his eyes, not quite spreading to his face. He took Nychev's place, kneeling down to catch Charlie's attention. Charlie finally looked at him. "Your brother just cracked this case open. From solitary confinement in a federal detention center."

Charlie frowned.

"Think about it. How many people would ever be capable of pulling that off? This may not be happening fast, but I promise you, that man will come out on top despite the toll it's taking on him."

"Well, you guys are the ones who found Lobell in the first place," Charlie pointed out.

David smiled. "Well, that's why we work as teams. I guess that makes this one pretty amazing team, if we can manage to work a case like this together." He reached out and took Charlie's hand, pulling him to his feet. "This is going to be one for the record books, when Don gets out."

"What can I do?" Charlie's voice was weak, but he wrapped one arm tightly around David in sincere affection and let the senior agent lead him out.

"Right now, I'd kill for anything that connects that program of yours to Talbott Studios without relying on Lobell's testimony."

"Okay."

"I'm going to work on getting together an employee list so we can do background checks, and I'll run it past you to see if any of the names ring a bell. Do you think there's any way you can connect them to that software?"

"Well – I can analyze their past and present film projects and see if I can detect any pattern changes that coincide with when they would have started using the program, any sudden increase in profitability, unconventional casting or storytelling decisions, that sort of thing."

"Good." David gave his shoulders a reassuring squeeze.

**GARAGE, EPPES RESIDENCE**

Amita came up behind Charlie and studied the work he was doing. It was accurate; it always was. But it was also conventional, even uninspired. The scrawled marks told her more plainly than words that Dr. Charles Eppes was seriously depressed. Or heartbroken. Or in shock. With Charlie, it could be all three.

She pried the chalk from his hand, ignoring the absent puzzlement in his expression, and led him to the couch. He struggled when she pulled him down by her side, but it was a halfhearted effort.

"I need to finish that," said Charlie. "I need to come up with a mathematical proof that connects Talbott Studios to the software."

"I know," said Amita, pushing a lock of dark hair back from his face and letting her arm come to rest around his shoulders. "And you're doing a terrible job."

Charlie responded with an amused pout. Amita didn't fall for the distraction. "Spill it, Charlie." Charlie groaned, his playful manner vanishing in an instant.

"It's just so incredibly depressing. I mean - working with the FBI, one at least gets the impression that there's some sort of perpetual struggle of good against evil. There's something innately reassuring about that. But this - this is a situation where good is - just failing."

He gave Amita an entreating look. "If Nychev were a corrupt agent with a grudge, or if Anderson were some sort of sadistic stereotype, or if Lobell were something other than a terrified guy trying his best to survive as a decent person - if Don deserved this.... But it's not, they're good, intelligent human beings who care about each other, and when that ends up with Don in jail - what's the point of striving to better ourselves as a species if that's the end result?"

"I don't know," said Amita, cuddling in against his side. "Not so long ago in terms of history, or even today in some other countries, Don would have been convicted and executed by now."

Charlie sighed. "I know."

"Personally, I find it touching how many people are being conscientious about this. That's not what one would automatically expect, and it's - well, I think it's lovely. Isn't it an example of hope, that maybe if we keep striving we will actually be able to better ourselves? That maybe it's happening right now?"

Charlie laid his head on her shoulder, closing his eyes. "I love you."

She kissed him, and sat quietly stroking the side of his face. "Not so long ago, you would have seen it that way yourself."

"I worry about that," Charlie admitted. "Spending so much time with the FBI."

Amita rested her cheek against his head. "I think your heart's still as soft as it ever was."


	19. Chapter 19

**Chapter 19**

**US DOJ METROPOLITAN DETENTION CENTER, 30 DAYS AFTER THE ARREST**

"David?"

"What?" Seeing the uncertain, even troubled expression on his boss's face, David softened his voice. "You know I'm here for you, right?"

"Do I strike you as a rough cop? I mean – I know I've crossed some lines, but in general?"

David sighed. "You've had some very dark days, and I do worry about what you'll do sometimes when things get too personal."

Don planted his face in his hands, and David studied the ugly bruising around his wrists, the taped-together wound on his head, the crushed posture. This was as close as Don Eppes ever got to a heart-to-heart with a colleague, and David wished he could reach out to him more effectively.

"I've seen you with crime victims, Don. It's hard for me to imagine anyone being gentler, physically or emotionally."

"Yeah, well, not a lot of agents beat up crime victims," said Don dryly. "In general, that's not a problem we have to deal with."

"Okay. Look – if we're talking on a purely physical level, I'd say anyone who watched you work for even a week would know you don't get off on hurting people."

David looked down at his hands, twiddling his thumbs. "Your manner might be a different matter. I don't think you always realize the impact the pissed-off attitude has on people who aren't used to it."

"Aren't used to it? What, you mean like you guys are?"

"Yes," admitted David. "We love you, Don, but you're not known for your warm and fuzzy manner. I sometimes think the only people you do care about actually expressing empathy with are the victims."

Don sighed. "Thanks for the honesty."

David wanted to reach out and hug him. This was a side of Don he rarely saw, the one that made him believe Charlie and Don actually were brothers.

"How many years dealing with the worst, and I feel like I'm just an over-educated, over-trained ten-year-old freaking out because he just figured out life wasn't fair."

David smiled. "Well, that ten-year-old grew up to spend his life trying to change that, it's hardly surprising it's still a thing with you."

"Yeah. I guess." Don rubbed his forehead.

"Hey. Why do you think we all put our lives on hold without hesitation when you were arrested? You're a good man. You're a loyal man, and a deeply caring one. The fact that we're having this conversation just proves that."

**BULL PEN, FBI OFFICE, 32 DAYS AFTER THE ARREST**

Vic Nychev strolled into the bull pen a little too casually. "I just talked to my boss. This is now an active investigation into the potential framing of an FBI agent." He grinned at the exhausted group of agents. "That means you boys have free rein to run the case on company time."

"Wow," said David. "Vic, thank you."

Nychev winced. "Don't thank me until we figure out whether I'm the guy who sent your boss to jail on a frame-up, okay? Rest of the rules haven't changed, interviews get cleared through my department, no contact with evidence without express permission –"

"Yeah, we get it," said Colby. "No falsifying evidence to clear the guy sent to jail by falsifying evidence."

Nychev eyed Colby with curiosity. "You guys have never doubted that, have you. What do I gotta do to get a team to be this loyal to me?"

"Be this loyal to them."

**WAR ROOM, FBI OFFICE**

Charlie burst into the war room with a flash drive clutched triumphantly in an upraised hand. Liz raised her eyebrows. "All hail the – memory stick?"

"From the NSA," said Charlie. "They completed their analysis, and this contains a report detailing exactly how they determined that the recording is a fabricated composite made on a M2K-300 sound station. Fully documented, and completely admissible in court."

There was a moment of silence and ecstatic glances. David grinned. "If it wouldn't make me sound like a complete idiot, I'd whoop out loud right now."

Colby grinned back. "You already sound like a complete idiot."

"Well, stop flattering me and get to work. There can't be many of these things out there, so let's tell Nychev we need to subpoena the manufacturers records of who purchased these units in the LA area."

Liz retrieved a folder and handed it to Charlie. "This is the employee list for Talbott Studios."

Charlie opened it and started flipping through the pages. On the sixth one, his eyes stopped dead. "Lisa Savarkar." He looked up at David, troubled. "She was one of my students."

"Was she a friend of yours?" asked David.

Charlie shook his head. "But – I liked her." His disappointment was clear, and the agents remained silent until he continued. "She was a gifted student, with a passion for saber metrics. She never finished her degree. She was hired by Google after her first year at CalSci, and as far as I know she never re-entered the academic world."

"I'm sorry, Charlie," said David.

Charlie sighed. "I'm not. It's a lead."

"Okay. As soon as the warrant comes through and we get the data pointing to Talbott Studios as the owner of a M2K-300, we'll use Lisa Savarkar as a reason to focus our investigation on Talbott."

"That should circumvent Lobell's involvement pretty neatly," said Liz. "I'll start seeing what I can find on Savarkar's known associates."

"Good. We should probably focus on finding anything that ties her to Rob Girsh, because we still don't have any way to connect him to the case without Lobell's statement."

**US DOJ METROPOLITAN DETENTION CENTER**

"You know, I could get used to this whole having hope thing," said Don, grinning.

Charlie grinned back. Don still had an unnaturally subdued air about him, but something had changed. This wasn't the ghost of Don Eppes sitting opposite him - this was Don.

"Yes, because giving up is so Don Eppes."

Don shrugged. "Hey, you guys were taking so long, figured you were glad to have me out of the way. David's probably making a power grab for my job…."

"I did catch him rubbing his hands and cackling the other day," admitted Charlie.

Don smiled. It wasn't the courageous, hurt smile of the past month, but an expression of joy. "This – really is gonna work out okay. That was a hard thing to believe for a while."

Charlie nodded. "Long month."

"You know – the whole concept of faith always bugged me. You spend even a year in law enforcement working violent crimes, you realize that God just doesn't step in and stop people from being murdered and tortured and raped, so why trust in something that'll let you down?"

Charlie's breath caught at Don's sudden shift from joy to darkness. "Don – are these the things you think about in here?"

Don shrugged. "Sometimes. I always thought it was so strange – so naive when Colby said he knew we were coming for him out on that freighter. I mean – it was a close thing we even figured out where he was, and I was so pissed I was this close to not even going after him. Hell, I would have shot the guy if he'd made the wrong move earlier."

"But you did come. Don't lie and tell me you hesitated to send in the cavalry, because you didn't. You just needed one good reason to trust him."

Don nodded, a soft smile showing through his eyes. "Being in here – I guess in some weird way I do have faith. I could be convicted, easy. Happens to innocent people all the time – " he threw up his hands. "Why should I believe I'm any different?"

"Don – you said once that you thought – whatever God was, He was in how we were there for each other. I'm not ready to hand my beliefs over to God, but I do know you have a great many people there for you."

"You know, when Lobell was here, he was just – screaming - in such terror. I was in a pretty bad way myself, and listening to that – I couldn't deal. I put my hand on that constellation on the wall and I prayed with everything I had. Only thing I had left."

Don drew in a deep breath and rubbed his eyes. "I'm not one to look for miracles, but not long after that Anderson decided to let me back out to talk to him. Whatever bond I formed with the kid that night – it's probably going to be the reason I go free."


	20. Chapter 20

**Chapter 20**

I am very sorry for the long delay. In addition to my "real job" I also run a small online jewelry business, which recently got some significant exposure and sales. As dearly as I missed writing, customers asking "Where's my order?" are not typically amused by the reply "Oh - sorry, I was busy with fanfic. Next week good for you?"

Things are quieter now, and I get to play again ;) I kept on writing snippets where I could, and the good news is the story is virtually finished. The rest of it simply needs a good proofreading and final edit.

Another delay was thanks to a slight change of story. I wrote the Girsh interrogation scene initially as just a straight procedural, "get this boring stuff over with so we can get back to the characters" sort of interlude, but it made me want to fall asleep every time I read it. So, along came a long head-scratching re-write while I found some way to make it interesting and character-development-y.

**CAL-SCI, CHARLIE'S OFFICE, 35 DAYS AFTER THE ARREST**

"Charlie? How you coming on that presentation?"

"Amita's just finishing up," said Charlie, tucking his phone between his shoulder and ear as he slung his laptop bag over the other shoulder. "I need to stop by the dean's office, and then I'll be on my way. She'll meet me at the FBI."

"Well, don't let the dean occupy too much of your time," said David. "Nychev and his men just left to pick up Rob Girsh, I thought you might want to be here when they bring him in."

"I just forgot about the meeting," said Charlie. He covered the phone with his hand and shouted to Amita on his way out the door. "See you at the FBI!"

"Oh, good," said Amita. "I get my very own absent-minded professor."

**OBSERVATION BOOTH, FBI OFFICE, TWO HOURS LATER**

Charlie looked curiously through the window. Girsh didn't look like the slick mastermind he'd somehow imagined as being behind this. He was in his early forties, with wavy blonde hair and a face that looked permanently confused in a pleasant sort of way. He tugged against the handcuffs holding him to the table, examining them as though more curious than trying to struggle.

The expression he gave Nychev when the agent entered was almost plaintive, and it tugged at Charlie's sense of sympathy. Nychev set down a small first aid kit and carefully applied antiseptic to a scrape on Girsh's cheek. Charlie shot a questioning glance at Nychev's agent in the room, who rolled his eyes in amusement. "Our bad guy barricaded himself behind a solid cherry door by wedging a ten-thousand-dollar desk against it and pushing as hard as he could."

Nychev released Girsh and handed him a bottle of water and some ibuprofen. Girsh gulped it before speaking. "So - what do I do when my lawyer fires me? Do I just look another one up in the phone book?"

The other agent in the booth whispered, "The lawyer was with him. He was not at all happy about the whole barricaded in the room thing."

Nychev raised his eyebrows. "Well, to start with, you don't ask your arresting agent for legal advice. But you don't want a corporate tax lawyer, you want a criminal one, and preferably you agree not to hold him against his will. They like little concessions like that."

"Look - " Girsh sighed. "I panicked."

"No shit."

"You should," said David. "You know who we've got in the next room over? Lisa Savarkar."

Girsh bit his lower lip. "It's not illegal to hire a math consultant. You guys practically have one in residence."

Nychev sat on the edge of the table and gave Girsh a curious look. "Now how would you know that?"

"Uh - I -"

"Needed a way to take him out of the game?" David suggested. "Tie him up in knots trying to get his brother out of jail so that he wouldn't have time for a side project like fixing some broken software? It didn't work, he already figured it out."

Girsh shot up from his chair, and was so preoccupied that he barely noticed when Nychev took him by the shoulders and shoved him unceremoniously back down in it. "Tell him not to release it! Please. I'll - we'll pay him and his friend for an exclusive license, they'll never have to work again."

"Now there's an idea," said Nychev. "Mind telling me exactly why you didn't take that approach in the first place?"

"The jerkoff that invented it wouldn't do it! He kept turning me down, some socialist nonsense about intellectual property and open source codes. But maybe we didn't offer him enough, maybe if Dr. Eppes helps sway him…."

"Oh. Yes." David's voice was dripping with bitter sarcasm. "Charlie's going to help you." Girsh gave him a pleading, still-hopeful look, and David rolled his eyes. "You're talking about a math professor who once insisted on playing decoy and faced down a cold-blooded killer in a dark courtyard. Know why? He wanted to personally nail the guy who stabbed his brother. While we're giving out useful advice? Don't mess with people's families."

"Look - let me at least try. My whole family owns stock in this company, and so do all of my employees. Please."

Nychev shrugged. "Okay. Works for me."

David looked up at the one-way panel and gave Charlie a slight nod. Charlie entered the interview room, stopping when the door shut behind him. Being in the room with the man was decidedly different than watching and listening from just a few feet away, and he found himself acutely aware of his own heartbeat. His own anger. His own nervousness, almost akin to stage fright.

No, not anger. Rage.

Watching from the impartial little room next door, he'd almost felt sympathy for Girsh. Now, facing the man who had done this to them and seeing the confused absence of remorse in his expression, Charlie was developing an acute desire to walk across the room and punch him. To beat him viciously until the look on his face matched the horror and pain Charlie felt at seeing Don behind that table in the detention center.

David broke Charlie's trance. "Professor, you can go ahead and set up your laptop on the table here if you'd like."

He fixed Charlie with a direct and very firm gaze that belied the exaggerated respect of his words. The message was plain: _Knock it off. Be a professional, remember?_

David looked back at Girsh. "I don't think I need to introduce you to Doctor Eppes, and I know he'd rather skip the small talk with the man who framed his brother. So why don't you just listen."

Charlie set up his laptop with the screen facing Girsh, avoiding eye contact and trying to steady his pulse. "Your distraction didn't work. I fixed the algorithms that were affecting the database searches." He scrolled through several pages, demonstrating his point.

Girsh had his face buried in his hands. "Please don't release this software. I don't even care about me, there are too many futures at stake here -when the stock market crashed, our people were left with nothing but their stock in our company, and we were going down in flames. Now there's hope, you know. Being the only ones with access to this - saber-metric-whatever - it means our movies are killing at the box office. Our stock price has tripled. If the playing field gets leveled...."

"It's not mine to distribute," said Charlie. "It was developed by a colleague of mine, the man you initially stole it from. As soon as I corrected the flaws, he uploaded it to the internet. By now, every first-year film student from here to Bangladesh has the torrent on their hard drive."

Charlie didn't apologize, even though it occurred to him that he normally would out of simple civility. He was starting to understand far more of Don's seemingly unpredictable swings between coldness and empathy in dealing with suspects, not to mention gaining a profound respect for the self-control of the agents who did this.

Girsh looked genuinely crushed, and the sound he let out was nothing short of a whimper. This time Charlie did want to say something to comfort him, but the words weren't coming. 'I don't forgive you and things aren't going to be all right, but please don't look so sad'? What was he supposed to say?

"You know how you can help the people you care about now?" asked David. "Do the right thing. Help us sort this out, and get an innocent man out of jail. Prove to them your heart was in the right place even though you made some mistakes."

Girsh shook his head. "I didn't say I had anything to do with this. You don't have that on me."

"Actually, we do," said Charlie. He pulled the statistics up on the screen. "I can prove, in court, based on your casting, production, and development choices as well as the box office performance, that your company has been using a working copy of this software for one year and two weeks. You were using this system and you were profiting from it. That's motive, and it also ties you very closely to me, as the only person who threatened your monopoly on this."

Girsh stared at the figures, staggered. Nychev filled in the silence. "Lisa told us she was hired to develop the software. About how you panicked when Charlie was given a copy to troubleshoot. This was your baby, and you said you would do literally anything it took to keep your company afloat. She also mentioned the time you asked how, if you were to make a movie about framing someone for fraud, would a character be able to cover up taking a couple million from the company accounts."

Nychev slammed a file down in front of Girsh, and Charlie flinched, instantly transported back to the day he had watched the agent do that to Don. "Take a look. Your studio owns the recording equipment used to create the sound recording that framed agent Eppes."

"I didn't -"

Nychev cut Girsh off with another file, opening it and pointing to the top page. "That's your handwriting. 'Final edit, Eppes project.' Wanna try and wiggle some more?"

Girsh was pale, and he licked his lips, looking down in defeat. "I knew you'd catch me eventually," he said in a subdued voice. "I just never thought it would be this quick. I thought we would have a few years to get back up on our feet." His hands were shaking. "God, I'm not ready for this. I'm just not."

"Don wasn't ready to be arrested for something he didn't do," said Charlie. "He wasn't ready to be hauled off in handcuffs and locked up alone in a metal cell with no idea what his future was about to turn into, he wasn't ready to be beaten just bec-" David took Charlie's hand and squeezed hard enough to hurt, breaking Charlie's focus enough for him to shoot the agent a questioning look.

David's silent answer was unmistakable. _Shut up._ He pulled a chair back from the table, and Charlie sat. There were dots swimming in front of his eyes, and he tried to focus on Girsh through them. Girsh was silent, his face pale and scared. Charlie stopped breathing when he realized his mistake.

He was going to confess, and I scared him out of it.

I just jeopardized Don's future for a fit of self-indulgent bullying.

He slowly became aware that David was still holding his hand, reassuring him with a calm glance. He squeezed the agent's hand in a silent thank-you.

Nychev brought over another chair and sat down by Girsh. "Nobody is ever ready to face the consequences of what they've done. But I can tell you this, the tension of living your life waiting for that knock on the door and the fear you feel when you know you're going to jail are a lot worse then it actually happening. Our imaginations make these things a lot more horrifying than reality."

Girsh gulped and looked at the agent with that same sort of plaintive trust Charlie had seen through the window. "Really?"

Nychev nodded. "You might as well get it over with and get on with your life."

Girsh explored the faces of the three men in the room, seeking understanding. There was something frustrated in the man's expression when he saw little. "Look - it wasn't like I set him up for murder or anything. He wouldn't have done that much time, these white collar guys get away with everything. I didn't want to hurt him. It was just a means to an end."

David shook his head in disbelief. "You probably won't serve much time yourself, but I doubt you're looking forward to it."

Charlie couldn't contain himself. "You studied my family for the express purpose of devastating me. That's -"

"Scientific?" suggested Girsh. "Mathematical precision? I'd think you would have a certain empathy with that."

Charlie's eyes snapped into focused anger. "Science and math are devoted to the pursuit of fact and reality for the overall betterment of mankind. You manipulated both to destroy a family so you could profit."

Girsh shrugged. "I'm sorry, okay? I don't have anything against the guy, I've never even met him. It was just business, I would've made sure he had enough around when he got out that he wouldn't ever have to find a job again."

"You ever meet someone who makes you want to bang your own head against a wall? That'd be me looking at you," said David. "I know you felt you were looking out for the people who were important to you, and I get wanting to take care of your friends. I just want you to actually understand what you did to _my _friend."

Girsh frowned. "I guess I don't. I - I talked to some people, scary ones. They were talking kidnapping, murder, setting the professor up for a death penalty charge, that sort of thing. I didn't want to hurt someone, you know? I spent a lot of money hiring consultants and having private investigators look into the Eppes' so I could do this without any real harm. I just don't see how some white collar charge is that big a deal."

"He's not Martha fucking Stewart!" David took a deep breath and brought his voice back down to normal. "He's one of our most capable agents, which means when you framed him he not only didn't get bail, he's been in solitary confinement this whole time so the serial killers, gangsters, mob enforcers, and rapists he's arrested couldn't murder him."

David stood and paced around the room. "That's twenty-three hours a day locked up in a concrete box knowing the career you dedicated your life to is over, and that you have a good chance of dying horribly at the hands of the scariest people in this country."

He put his fists on the table and closed his eyes. Nychev took over for him, his voice holding a gentler tone. "Not only that, with his training and experience, they have to classify him as a high security risk, and that's not fun. Everything we're talking about here, it's because Eppes is an agent who's very good at what he does. It's not going to go that way for you, okay? You are this mythical white criminal you built up in your head, he's not. But you have to understand, you did hurt him, and you hurt the people who respected him and had to do this to him."

Girsh sighed and looked down at the table. "When you put it that way….I honestly didn't know it would be like that, okay. I am sorry. I'll cooperate with whatever you need me to sign or - whatever. I don't really know how confessing to a crime works, but I'll do it."

David sat down again. "Okay." He closed his eyes momentarily before addressing Girsh again. "Thank you."

Charlie couldn't look at any of them. The anger was drained out of him, and its absence left him feeling as crushed as Girsh, perhaps even more so. He couldn't tell what he was feeling, or what he was supposed to feel, so finally he forced himself to ask what seemed like a logical question. "What do we have to do to get Don out?"

**FEDERAL PROSECUTOR'S OFFICE**

"Robin? Whose strings can you pull to get an innocent FBI agent released from the detention center on a Saturday afternoon?"

Anyone watching through the window at Robin's office would have seen little indication that anything had happened. An overworked federal prosecutor closed her eyes and almost let the phone slip a fraction in her hand. The file she'd been holding was placed neatly on the desk, and she stood.

"Strings? I'll knock down doors. Doors belonging to federal judges, if I have to."

**FBI OFFICE, BULL PEN**

"Dad?" Charlie collapsed into a chair at David's desk, clutching his phone like a lifeline. He was still shaken, and Alan's steady voice was like a balm. "It's over. Girsh confessed - they've got a lot of red tape, but I think you can set up a party tonight."

There was an extended silence, and a sigh of deep relief. "When we pick him up, you let me drive, all right?"

"Okay," said Charlie. The idea of not getting behind the wheel of a car any time soon sounded welcome. The silence continued, both of them a little too exhausted and on the brink of feeling a little too deeply to think of anything to say.

"Has anyone called Robin?" asked Alan.

"Yes," said Charlie. "David's talking to her right now, and I've arranged for her and our lawyer to meet at the prosecutor's office."

"Well, I'm coming over to the FBI," said Alan.

"Thanks, Dad," said Charlie, hanging up and closing his eyes. He hadn't known until this moment how utterly drained he was.

David hung up the phone, stood and wrapped an arm around Charlie's shoulders. When Charlie looked up, he saw a similar reflection of deep exhaustion and relief in the agent's eyes. "How do you do it?" asked Charlie.

David gave Charlie's back a final pat and sat down again. "It's not usually this personal."

"I never knew how intense it is, running an interrogation. I thought the suspect was supposed to be the one scared to death, not me."

David nodded slowly. "Well, your suspect has his own future to be concerned about. When you're worried about someone else's future, it's a lot of pressure. Someone's life could rest on what sort of rapport you develop with a stranger who usually hates you or is afraid of you by default."

The look he gave Charlie held no veneer of reserve or toughness. "When it's someone you care about - that's almost unbearable. That's when the best of people can lose their mind."

Charlie gulped. "You saw I wanted to hurt him, didn't you." David nodded, his eyes sad.

"It feels so horrible now." A thought hit him, and he closed his eyes. "Don. Oh - Don." He drew a deep breath, getting his emotions together. "You guys have the hardest job in the world."

David and Charlie looked up at the sound of footsteps. "May I?" Nychev gestured at one of the empty chairs by David's desk, clearly hesitant about the reception he might get.

When David nodded, Nychev sat heavily and cradled his forehead in his palm. "Oh, God."

He forced himself to face them. "Guys - I'm so sorry." The agent did look genuinely devastated. "What I've put him through-"

"It's not your fault," said David. "You were just doing your job."

Nychev shook his head. "I know. But - Sinclair - that guy's one of my heroes. It hurt bad enough putting the case together and arresting him, now I find out he was innocent? And I did this to him?"

David sighed and leaned back in his chain. "Look. I don't know many agents who would have the confidence and humanity to give us the leeway, let alone the cooperation you did to let us destroy your case. Don was incredibly lucky to have someone with your kind of integrity running this."

Nychev glanced over at Charlie. "I'm well aware of what I put your family through. I'm sorry."

Charlie looked at the agent. "I have nightmares. About you - interrogating Don that night, about you showing up at our house and taking Dad -"

"I saw you flinch in there today," said Nychev. "My stunt with the file?" Charlie nodded, and Nychev rubbed his eyes with a sigh.

"Thanks for letting me be there," said Charlie. "As hard as this was, I think it would have killed me not to be involved."

Nychev nodded. "Okay." He found a faint smile somewhere within himself. "I'm gonna go back downstairs to my office and write up the tattered remains of my career and dignity."

"Vic." David's voice stopped the agent as he was walking away. "You won't be catching any heat from our end. You ran a hard case, and you ran it well."


	21. Chapter 21

**Chapter 21**

Note: I'd like to mention that this is not, in fact, the last chapter :D

**FEDERAL PROSECUTOR'S OFFICE**

"Get in my way on this, and I will leave you whimpering in a corner." Robin snapped her phone shut and shook hands awkwardly with the man who'd just entered.

Don's lawyer gave her a questioning smile. "The girlfriend, right?"

Robin glared at him. "Assistant US Attorney Robin Brooks."

"Look - this is your turf, and we both want the same thing. I'm more than willing to take the lead on this, if it's more comfortable professionally for me to be the one acting like the demanding defense attorney while you stay out of it."

There was a flash of fire in Robin's eyes. "I have been the textbook definition of professional for five weeks, and it's taken every shred of self-control I have. Meaning I don't have any left."

Robin gave the other lawyer a condescending pat on the shoulder, not really caring that her insincere smile bordered on a smirk. She simply dared any human being in a suit to step in her path right now, regardless of good intentions.

"Just sit back. We have an innocent FBI agent in jail. By the time I'm done they'll be nominating injunction-filing to be the next Olympic event."

**BREAK ROOM, FBI OFFICE**

"Dad - do you think Don's going to be okay when he gets out?"

"Why wouldn't he be okay?" asked Alan.

"I've just never seen him question himself so much, or be this open about things that bother him. As touched as I am by the confidences, it's - I'm finding it quite disturbing."

Alan sighed, wandering over to a window and looking out, deep in thought. "When you were very young, you began to teach us things. You were always driven to show us how you saw the world."

He turned to look at Charlie. "I watched Donnie interrogate someone once. The FBI didn't teach him how to do that. He was born asking questions the way you were born teaching. Even at six years old he would look right into our eyes and ask things - deep questions, about human nature and life and religion and justice. You couldn't brush him off with an answer that would satisfy a child. The questions he posed were the things professors write entire thesis's about."

"He'd never listen to anything I had to say," said Charlie, a tinge of bitterness underlying the playful remark.

"That's because you weren't answering _his_ questions," said Alan. "One of these days he was bound to turn that constant questioning on himself, and I'm not entirely certain it's a bad thing."

"Are you saying you think he deserves to think this badly of himself?"

"No, I'm saying you're missing the point. He's not condemning, he's asking questions. That's who he is, Charlie. He's been investigating since the day he was born, and he was bound to work his way around to his own soul eventually."

Charlie nodded, joining Alan at the window. "It's just - I've been reading some very disturbing things about the effects of solitary confinement. It causes changes in the brain, in personality - it's considered by some people to be a form of torture."

Alan's expression was deadly serious. "I'm his father, Charlie. I can't see him in that place without thinking it would hurt less if someone would shove a hot poker into my heart. That's not some tough FBI agent in there, that's my little boy. But even I can make myself see that he's had to put his life in their hands and he accepts how that works. I've looked pretty long and hard into his eyes, and I believe he's telling the truth when he says he's okay there."

Charlie sighed. "I guess it is Don. He's been through worse, I've just never seen him like this."

"He isn't breaking down. If he were, we'd never know it." Alan sighed and sat down, frowning at the table and tapping lightly at a coffee stain with one finger before deciding to continue. "Your mother and I were raised in a time that was changing when you two were very young. A man didn't talk about his feelings. I wish I'd been able to teach him something different, but that's just the way it was. We threw him into this world and told him to deal with it, so he did. The thing is, given his intelligence, we didn't always remember that he was also a young child."

"Like they threw him in jail and told him to deal with it?"

Alan gave him a dry smile. "No, but unlike with Donnie, we weren't the only ones who raised you. Your early influences came from the academic world, from people whose attitudes and intelligence were ahead of their time. You were never taught that being stoic was the same as being strong, and I'm grateful for that. But Don was. Letting his emotions show is one of the bravest acts in the world for that man."

Alan glanced at Charlie. "Trust me, I know. I've tried to do it myself."

"So he has the courage to let me see what's going on in his head, and I repay that by thinking he's losing it." Charlie stood and walked over to the counter, planting his palms on it and wondering if Don hated himself this often. Probably. Definitely.

"I am an idiot."

**US DOJ METROPOLITAN DETENTION CENTER**

"I'm here to meet with Kevin Anderson," said Charlie, suddenly uncomfortable.

Was this massively inappropriate? Would Colby or Don be yelling at him tomorrow with that familiar expression that said, 'Charlie, what were you _thinking_?'

"Nice to see you under better circumstances, Dr. Eppes," said a friendly voice behind him. Anderson extended his hand as Charlie turned.

"Charlie," said Charlie, shaking his hand with a twinge of nervousness.

Anderson didn't miss it, and he walked Charlie down the hall. "Are you sure you want to go up? It's not a tourist destination, especially for someone who's been held here."

Charlie frowned. "I - I'm not really afraid to go up there." He braved meeting the detention officer's eyes. "In fact - I've been meaning to thank you guys for making my arrest – well, something that could have been really frightening, and I know you went out of your way to make it an experience that really wasn't so bad."

Anderson's face broke into an almost affectionate smile. "Kiddo, if everyone they booked in here was like you, our job would be a lot easier. So what's wrong?"

"Is - this wildly inappropriate? What I'm asking to do here?"

"On all fronts," said Anderson without hesitation.

Charlie felt his heart sink. "I'm sorry. Tell me where to wait - I didn't mean to-"

Anderson interrupted. "Let me tell you something. There aren't many guys you let yourself care about in here, but now and then someone looks you in the eyes with the kind of dignity that just doesn't belong to a criminal. I hoped Eppes was innocent and I hoped like hell you guys would find out before he was tried and shipped out. So I'm celebrating by being as inappropriate as I damned well feel like."

Charlie looked up, startled into a smile when he saw the warmth reflected in Anderson's eyes. "Really?"

"Yeah." He put a hand on Charlie's shoulder and led him down the hall. "I get to release one hell of an amazing FBI agent tonight, let's have fun with it."

Charlie walked at his side for a minute before realizing he was grinning like an idiot. "Don would like you in the real world, you know. I think he'd like you a lot."

Anderson stopped and examined him carefully, his face deeply sober. It was similar to something Charlie had watched Don do during interrogations, watching someone so intensely. It wasn't a hostile act, but instead one that seemed to allow himself to crawl inside someone else's mind. Anderson was trying to make up his mind about something, and his study of Charlie yielded a decision.

"Agent Eppes is an intelligent, stable guy, and I've no doubt psych'll clear him for duty straight away. But being held in solitary for any significant length of time is very difficult." Anderson touched Charlie on the arm with a gentle hand. "He knows that, it just might be a good thing if someone he's close to recognizes this was no small thing he's been through."

Charlie nodded, choking back the sick feeling in his heart. "I - researched it. I - I'm going to ride home with him in the car, dad's picking us up. We'll give him all the time he needs."

The detention officer smiled. "Good man. No moping, okay? You're about to make his day in a major way. He gets to put this in his past now." Charlie drew in a deep breath and forced a return smile, which quickly became sincere.

**SOLITARY CONFINEMENT UNIT**

Don's eyes were closed. If he did that, and if he made himself relax his body completely, he could pretend he was back home, lying on the couch. If he blurred the background noise enough, it became the comforting chatter of the television, with Charlie and Alan and Amita going on about something that didn't interest him. He didn't like that he had been here long enough to learn how to find peace and comfort in this cell, or to so effectively warp reality, but he was almost content.

Almost. It was adding Robin to the mix that always ripped him out of his fantasies and left him feeling utterly desolated.

Damn it.

He pressed his head hard against the pillow and reminded himself of his own rules. No thinking about Robin. No thinking about what'll happen if you're convicted. No feeling sorry for yourself just because this isn't fair.

There was the brief, sharp rap of knuckles on the door calling for his attention, and he snapped his head up. Anderson was unlocking the door, and he stood, giving the officer a questioning glance. It was met with a blank look, and Don glanced down as the door was opened. He was filled with a sudden longing for human interaction that didn't involve orders and constant caution, and he braced himself to be chained up and taken - where?

He raised his head, puzzled.

Then he blinked, starting to question his own grasp on reality.

"Uh - Charlie?" When cell doors got opened around here, a fellow expected to see just about anything besides a cocky-looking, grinning mathematician.

"So, uh, we're having pizza tonight, and dad and I were wondering if you wanted to come by the house and join us."

They arranged bail. They got me out of here for the night on some sort of special pass. I'd know if they solved the case. Don looked between Charlie and Anderson, not allowing himself to hope that this meant what he thought it did. But why else would Charlie be grinning like that?

Don shot a questioning glance at Anderson, whose smile held genuine joy. He nodded. "The FBI called. They want their agent back."

Don sucked air into his lungs and held tightly to the door. His legs were shaking, the release of more than a month of carefully controlled tension and fear and shock overwhelming him.

"Whoa." He knew it was for real, there was no way either one of them would do this to him if it weren't, but a part of him still had to ask. He had to hear it, had to see that joy on their faces and be assured that the nightmare was over. "For real? You're sure about this?"

The warmth and love in Charlie's expression gave him everything he needed. "One hundred percent. You've been cleared of all charges. Come - come out of the cell, Don."

He glanced at Anderson. The officer nodded, a sincere smile on his face. "Come on. You can stop acting like a prisoner now."

Don looked at the two men, at the white hallway with its row of metal doors, at the cell he'd spent the last month of his life in. Seeing it, as Anderson had suggested, not as a prisoner but as himself.

As himself.

I just got my life back. God, thank you.

He closed his eyes momentarily, realizing what he'd just said to himself.

"Guys - I don't think I've ever been this grateful for anything in my life. I mean - I guess maybe I have, but-" he stopped. "What I'm trying to say is thank you. Thank you both, so much."

Anderson looked away at Charlie. "If the FBI hands out awards for incredible grace under pressure, you nominate this guy, okay?"

Charlie smiled, his lips twitching as he tried not to cry when he saw the depth of emotion on Don's face. "Come - come on. Let's get you out of here."

**LOBBY, US DOJ METROPLITAN DETENTION CENTER**

Don strolled out in his own clothes, putting his watch on with a satisfied grin and slipping a small object into his pocket. "Ahh, my cell phone. My beautiful, beautiful cell phone."

After the briefest hesitation, he stepped forward and shook hands with Anderson. "So - I hope you don't ever decide to quit. But if you ever get to thinking about joining the FBI, give me a call. I'll put a word in for you."

"FBI, huh?" Anderson raised an eyebrow.

"You've got good instincts," said Don.

"Got a card?" Don fished a business card out of his wallet and handed it to him. Anderson looked at it with a smile. "Maybe I'll give you a call for a beer a few months down the road."

"It's a deal." Don clapped him on the shoulder. "No offense, but I'm ready to get out of here. Charlie?"

"Dad's waiting for us in the car."

Don couldn't help but recognize the irrepressible grin on his brother's face, or the spring in his step as they walked down the corridor. He stopped, grinning himself. "Feels good, doesn't it?"

"You have no idea," said Charlie. "Is this - is this what you feel when you crack a kidnapping case?"

Don nodded. "I'm warnin' you, it's addictive. High of a happy ending, watching someone walk free -"

"Wow."

"Most amazing feeling in the world."


	22. Chapter 22

**Chapter 22**

**DRIVING HOME**

The glass diffracted the lights of traffic against an inky blue night sky into a dramatic dance of reds and whites and yellows, and there was a peaceful droning noise as the tires glided over bumps and dips in asphalt. The comfortable softness of the back seat held him suspended in what could have been weightlessness, with all of its disoriented joy and upside-down reality.

Aware of the silence, and hoping it wasn't an awkward one, Don glanced at Charlie and Alan. They seemed as content as he was. Charlie caught the look and impulsively reached out his hand, entangling his fingers in Don's. Don looked out the window again, letting the lights blur with their peace and dancing unpredictability, beauty the only constant. He tightened his hand around Charlie's, unwilling to look away.

Maybe that had always been his problem, not being able to look away. Being wired to look right at the horrors. But if you closed your eyes, you missed this beauty. If it took the devastating blankness of a jail cell to bring out the incredible peace and beauty of LA traffic in the evening, maybe it also took the horror of human violence to make a man truly feel what it was to be loved, to appreciate the exquisite feeling of a tender touch, to fully feel this.

And what of the constant fight against numbness? How many murders, how many suicides and grieving family members, how many hours in a cell before the human psyche simply called it quits and decided not to feel? I won this time, but what about tomorrow? Can you keep remembering that it's worth it?

His eyes drifted away from the lights and onto Alan's face reflected in the rearview mirror. Further, onto Charlie's endearing attempt to relax and give him space by engaging in intense study of the passenger door lock.

Yeah. I think that'll be doable.

**EPPES RESIDENCE**

Don's black FBI rig was parked where he'd left it on the day of his arrest, and he gave the warm metal an affectionate pat, wondering who had been thoughtful enough to return it to him.

"Close your eyes," Charlie asked, grinning. Don obeyed with an awkward smile, and Charlie led him to the back yard.

"Open your eyes," Don heard his brother say. It seemed symbolic. _Open your eyes. The nightmare is over_.

Don heard crickets and a crackling fire, and opened his eyes.

The back yard was filled with chairs, and a low fire danced in the firepit. Robin, Alan, Amita, and David were smiling at him with upheld champagne glasses, and David pressed a glass gently into his hand.

"Welcome home, son," said Alan.

"Don -" Robin couldn't finish the sentence before diving forward and wrapping her arms around him. He hugged her, closing his eyes and burying his face in her hair, seeking out a soft cheek with his lips. There was a tear running down it, and he wiped it away with his own cheek. They didn't kiss at first, but simply pressed their faces and bodies together in the deepest possible embrace.

"You - are the most wonderful thing I -" he whispered, stopping in mid-sentence to kiss her on the cheek. He'd been so afraid in the middle of those long days, with nothing but time to think, that she was going to be gone when it was over, that this was the sweetest and most unbearable sort of relief. "Thank you." The soft fingers wrapped around the back of his neck twisted themselves in his hair almost angrily, pulling him even closer.

"Are you all right?" Her voice shook, and Don closed his eyes, his face tracing along hers until he found her lips and kissed deeply. Don forgot everything for that moment, content to let the world with all its pain vanish completely.

"Of all the ways to lose you…." Her whisper was unsteady, and she tucked her cheek against his chest. He stroked her hair with his fingers, trying to reassure her. Trying to reassure himself that she was actually there, and this wasn't just him in a cell thinking up fairy tales that would never come true. "God, Don. I was so scared."

He tucked his head down against hers. "Me too, sweetie. Me too." He wondered if there could be any greater comfort in this world than the feeling of her body held against his with such intense care and trust. "Did you ever think I -"

"- was guilty? No. Not for a second."

He held her even tighter, and after a moment a hesitant voice asked a question of her own. "I wasn't there for you."

"We both had to sit this one out," said Don. He stroked her back, hoping his touch would reassure her in ways he couldn't accomplish with words. From the way her body melted in his arms, he guessed that his message had gotten through. Finally they separated, with Robin keeping one arm wrapped possessively around his back, to Don's great delight.

His eyes fell on his brother, who was watching with the sort of sideways look that spoke of shy embarrassment, but when their eyes met it was something a great deal more. That expression he'd seen in school, at the FBI, in his shrink's office, and somehow managed to take for granted.

Adoration.

Every thing I've put him through, and one of the most renowned minds in the world is looking at me with unconditional love.

It struck him that he'd hugged Charlie twice in his adult life, and both times in the midst of utter heartbreak.

Amita's kidnapping, my arrest. Oh, and if you can even count that as a hug, shivering in my arms after a sniper almost killed him. Never just because I love him.

"Come here, Chuck," said Don, waving Charlie over. "I think we have a hug to finish."

Charlie approached, but he stopped and faced Don squarely, his bearing so focused and adult that for a moment, Don mistook it for anger. It wasn't.

"I'm in awe of you," said Charlie. "I'm in awe of what you do, and who you are as a person. You amaze me."

Don blinked, unprepared for the blunt intensity of Charlie's words. Unable to respond verbally, he simply did what he had planned to. He hugged his brother. After a moment of awkward tension, they relaxed, and Don gripped Charlie even tighter, thinking about all the times he hadn't done this. "You were my lifeline in there, buddy."

Charlie didn't say anything. He just clung to Don, shaking slightly just the way he had before they were ripped apart at the detention center. Don suspected he was crying, but if he was, Charlie kept his face well hidden.

Alan turned towards the table and set to work sliding slices of pizza onto the plates so that his two sons wouldn't see the emotion on his face. The years of wondering if he would live to see this moment, or even if they themselves would live to see it....

"Is it seriously raining?" asked David. He had been hanging back quietly, unwilling to intrude on the moments he was being allowed to witness. He held out his palm and felt the wet sensation of raindrops beginning to fall on his skin. "Et tu, Pasadena." He and Alan exchanged glances and sprang forward as one to grab food to rush inside.

"Where?" David and Alan stopped and glanced at each other, wondering where to set up now that the idea of an outdoor party had been nixed so inconsiderately by the weather.

"Solarium?" suggested David. Alan nodded approval.

"Solarium, huh?" asked Don, as touched as he was amused. "Outdoor picnic? You guys think now I can't handle walls?"

"I've no doubt you can handle pretty much anything," said Alan in a dry tone. "But if I were in your shoes, I'd be pretty tired of them, that's all."

"You got a point," agreed Don. "Still, eggshells crunch pretty loud underfoot." He looked around and asked David, "Where's everyone from work?"

David gave him a sheepish, sideways grin. "Walking on eggshells," he admitted. "We thought that – well, you know, what if Colby get drunk and started shooting at stars in a galaxy far, far away, or Liz and Nikki –"

Don rolled his eyes. "Yeah. Not sure my delicate constitution could take that horror."

"A little help, David?" said Alan, balancing pizza boxes. David grinned at Don and turned to help Alan.

It was raining, but warm. An invigorating wind filled the night air, and Don stopped on the way in, drawing in a deep breath and letting the raindrops fall on him, enjoying the cool sensation of their slow trickle across his skin. The lights of the house were like a friendly beacon through the rain, and he closed his eyes, savoring every second.

Charlie watched as his own heartache of the last month was replaced by that joy. Don stretched his palms out to catch the raindrops, a delighted grin growing on his face.

**SOLARIUM, EPPES RESIDENCE**

Amita raised her glass. "To my future brother-in-law, who has meant more to more people than he will ever guess."

Don raised his own glass. "To faith, and trust." He hesitated before adding his last words. "To love." His eyes searched out each person in the room, one at a time.

"All the forces of the universe fight to tear the earth apart, yet gravity holds us together," said Charlie. "Larry said that once, and I always thought it had deeper meaning."

"You know," Don swirled his glass and watched the bubbles float upward, as convenient an excuse as any not to make eye contact. "The first time I went to temple, I was just feeling it out. Thing is, I'm standing there, and the whole thing was so - beautiful."

He sipped at the champagne, stopping to enjoy the crisp bubbles on his tongue. "Think I went in because it humbled me, knowing this – this work of art was devoted to something unknowable."

Don drew a deep breath, realizing his eyes were so averted that his head was almost twisted sideways. The expectant silence behind him was worse than facing them and finishing the damn speech.

"I don't like how hard this was, my life in the hands of other people, no control over my future…." He looked at them, and saw understanding. "This is every bit as humbling, because I am just in awe of what you did for me. I feel like that took so much love, and faith, and those things are what I'm feeling now because of you."

Don held up his glass, and closed his eyes. "Thank you for this."

"To the things that humble us," said David softly, raising his glass to Don's. The others joined, and Don took a large gulp before striding to the window and staring out. The choices seemed at first to be jumping out the window or tears, and either option was plainly unacceptable.

"I seem to remember somebody promised me pizza," he ventured.

"Nice soggy pizza, now," said Alan. "Would you like the Portobello mushroom and water pie, or the pepperoni with acid rain reduction?"

"Oh, stop whining, dad." Charlie rolled his eyes. "You're the one who wouldn't let me set up a weather forecasting model to determine the likely success of an outdoor meal."

"Kinda' quiet, David," observed Don, walking up beside him.

David smiled, but his eyes were serious. "I'm just wondering how many months it's going to be before your heart stops sinking when you open the door and see us out there."

Don explored the bubbles in his champagne at length. "How long did it take Colby?"

David took his own time studying his glass. "I don't know that there is any such thing as better or worse when it comes to trauma. Maybe just who we have at our side, and I have to wonder what happens if they're the same people who arrested you."

"Yeah," said Don, a look of affection settling deep in his eyes. "You know, the last time I had a real partner was Billy Cooper?"

David looked puzzled, but let Don continue. "I mean, we work together, I think we care about each other, I just never thought it would run this deep."

David gave him a half smile. "You're a moron."

There was something deeply happy in Don's return grin. "Well, I just gotta say, my family feels about three times bigger." He reached out and clinked his glass against David's.

Don's phone rang, and he checked it. "Video feed. From Colby," he said, pressing the answer key.

"To celebrate your release from jail, and your unhealthy obsession with interrogation footage, I am proud to announce that we here at the LA Violent Crimes Squad have done a little fabrication of evidence ourselves." Colby held out a DVD and wiggled it at the camera with a wickedly amused smile that caused Don's heart to sink at the teasing this doubtless meant he was going to be enduring very, very soon.

"I do not obsess!" Don protested. "You got the wrong Eppes brother on that count." He glared at the noise his complaint caused. "Colby, was that a snicker?"

It happened again. "No, Sir." Colby cleared his throat with a cough. "Your rampant abuse of the instant replay button on the interrogation room CCTV feed is just a hobby, we all understand that."

Liz's voice called out from off screen. "Here, aim it at the monitor." After a moment of swinging blurs, the picture focused. "Okay, we got it. Hit play." Nikki obeyed, grinning. "Enjoy the preview!"

In the black and white of their standard interrogation footage, Don half threw himself across the table at a suspect, shouting in feigned rage. "I did not -" the camera did a quick cut to a very similar scene "- have sex with that man!" A moment later, he was sitting on the metal table, thoughtful. "How do you define that?"

Don yelled in the phone. "Colby! I'm going to kill you…."

Nikki laughed in the background. "We love you too, boss."

Footage was still playing on the monitor, and Don saw a suspect handing him something. "What's that, a sex tape?" Don's recorded voice asked. The scene shifted, subtly this time. "Like me and Robin?"

"Colby? Do the words 'serious breach of professional conduct' mean anything to you?" Despite his words, Don was grinning broadly, and the affectionate tone of his voice couldn't have been missed by those on the other end of the line.

There was a long shot of Don, looking soulful and sincere. His eyes blinked and the scene faded into black before he spoke. "I happen to love vampires."

The video cut off, and three voices spoke in unison. "Welcome back, Don."

Don was blushing when he slipped the phone back into his pocket, but his eyes were filled with joy. He sat down and grabbed a slice of pizza. "Ya' know, maybe these things should happen to all of us law enforcement types. See what it's like to get stabbed, sent to jail, have your friends kidnapped by psychopathic killers -"

David threw up his hand to stop him. "I think maybe the country can do with law enforcement personnel who _aren't_ psychotic."

"Are you saying that one Don Eppes in the world is quite enough?" asked Alan. "Because you don't want to offend the man who provides the pizza."

"I have to say I find this idea of yours quite disturbing as well," said Charlie. "Uh - does your mandatory stabbing program extend to math consultants? Because I don't think it's possible to emphasize enough how not okay I am with that." He dodged the lazy kick Don aimed in his direction and returned it with flung popcorn.

"I'd hate to see your version of Quantico," said David. "What would the final test be? Load the graduating class on a plane with terrorists, and if they survive they get to be agents?

"Hey, I used to instruct at Quantico," protested Don.

"I know," said David. "Believe me, I've heard the stories."

Robin walked up and wrapped her arms around Don from behind, kissing him when he laid his head back against her and closed his eyes in contented bliss. "You planning to party all night, or does the girlfriend get you alone with strawberries and champagne at some point?"

"Mmm." Don smiled, not opening his eyes. "Chocolate?"

"Definitely."

He tilted his head up and kissed her. "Just give me a few minutes with dad," he whispered. Don let his head rest against her for a few more moments, not wanting to move.

Alan was standing at the window, looking out at the yard in the rain. Don walked up and stood at his side. "That wasn't the sort of champagne you just pick up at the store on a Saturday night."

Alan was silent for a long time before replying. "I bought it a week after you were arrested. It was either go crazy or plan for your release, so I opted for champagne."

Don grinned. "Good choice, dad." He held up his glass in a toast. "To party planning as family crisis management."

"Donnie." Alan waved him over to the table, upon which a large white bakery box sat. "Come on over and open up your cake."

"You got me a cake?" Don flashed them a grin. "Better not be my birthday already." He pulled off the lid of the box and stopped, the banter gone from his manner. Arranged across the expanse of white cake was a pattern drawn in plump raspberries. "That's -"

"The big dipper," Alan finished, smiling.

* * *

_**Dear Hollywood Production Executives:**__ I'm well aware of the irony of casting you as the villains in a story that wouldn't exist if it weren't for your bringing us a television show that I love dearly. Sorry about that. But someone had to be the villain, and quite frankly this ending simply had a better ring to it than, "And then Charlie discovered that Don had been framed by a Mexican clown wrestling syndicate. The end."_

_**Dear Readers**__: Thank you so much for being with me through the writing of this, and for your support and reviews. I hope all of you will check out the dedication now posted at the beginning of the first chapter. I have another Numb3rs fic in the works, but it may be a while before I have it plotted out carefully enough to start writing and posting in earnest. _


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